peace to his people
you: want bells and hymns and choirs and righteousness, taking hits off the incense that smells exactly like heroin when it's cooking (which is why there are so many junkies in the back on friday nights, half-naked and starved with cracked skin, giggling at the dirty glares of their christian neighbors while winking at you knowingly because every breath you take in you make the same face they do when the needle hits the vein) candles and hark the herald angels sing and the altar boy with the soft blond hair and blue eyes, still unmarred by the effects of life and puberty. he's not too young, he's seen, yet for some reason still believes every touch is innocent and harm only comes to those who don't believe.
he is more the potential of a man that what a man is, and maybe this is what draws you to him, that he is a could be and not a definite. maybe he reminds you of you, what you could have been, could have chosen, a different occupation, location, mental state. maybe it is the newness, the chase, the unexpectedness, the secrecy of it all, maybe it is just that thrill you cannot explain, the overwhelming sensation that like your first orgasm or pure heroin and when both are together in the same body-
-my god, i have forsaken thee.
afterwards, of course. there is the guilt of giving in like an anorexic that just ate the chocolate cake sitting under her bed, empty alcohol bottles and porno flicks and blood that stains salvation army chairs, the cries of 'no, no, please stop' on repeat, reaffirming no one will ever love you, you are alone and painful and dangerous when all you wanted was your boy-happiness, someone to share the thrill of themselves with.
to share life with, if only for a little while.
(that evening, there is a snowstorm. you envision yourself, alone and peaceful, everyone peaceful, when you are six feet under the ice.
you take a shower with an electrical cord around your neck.)
(and the boy, the blond soft unmarred boy, holds polaroids of what his childhood used to be while snowflakes tangle in his eyelashes and he wonders wonders needs to know if he can take back the memory one day-
he fingers the vestments in the wardrobe and smiles while the choir prepares for high mass.)
glory glory
glory glory to god, in the highest
and peace to
his people on earth.
-fin.
A/N: Let me explain. This piece really just began writing itself out of nowhere. It's one of my favourites that I have written, but I feel it's necessary to add a disclaimer so the meaning of this poem isn't taken as something it's not. I'm not Catholic or priest-bashing; in fact, I was raised Catholic. Though I don't really adhere to those or any belief system now, I still respect the religion. However, there are priests who abuse young boys in the Church, and the psychology behind it, for some reason, interests me. I wonder the who and the how and the why, and this is one interpretation of abuse, and is not meant to be anything except a character study, and certainly nothing where the main intention is to be offensive.