Because Blessing Means to Mark With Blood, Bless

this heart, its caverns of somewhere laughter, its waking craters, 
its forest of knives. Dilate its thin pulsing complicities

& cigar-fat arteries, cradle its crack-addict angels 
camping beneath its highway insomniac drivers carving

out the night with fog-boggled high beams. Exalt its inclement 
weather & its untethered animal wagging at strangers

in hospital ruins & boomtown cranes. Baptize its blind need. Bow 
to its daily bleed, its ribbed incarceration & caress

its inner exile, its caged child dreaming, its illegal im-
migration. Aubade its drone surveillance, sing its signature

strikes, assassinations & its inevitable future
recriminations, black site insecurity breaches. Praise

its predawn raids, its armed reaching, its stubborn public preaching 
& private-school teaching, bless its sick fixations & city

limits, its wayward & unmoved, its naked hunger heading 
out of its damned mind. Shout-out to the lights-out carbon-scorching

further-burn of future Earth, whose quiet standing ovation 
at our disappearance will make the sound of no hands clapping.

Bless this heart, its insisting, resisting, persisting fist.
Hallow its many mouths feasting, delight in the blood-rush

coming & going in a happy hour Roma holiday 
party that lasts a life, its walled prison yard & closet

cosmos, its osmotic lost longing, its courtyard gardens 
of hair, its river of dream-eyes, its lavish mansion inside

its snug hut. Shrine its insistent knocking, knocking, its breaking 
& entering, letting in every & every—but wanting 
                                                                              only you to stay.