Prayer

I am not a good man.
No need of a god to confess
that one to,
to offer penance—
passion’s ashes and a spent bag of wind—
every god’s treasure:
Another sorry old man
like Himself.

Or so the old ones say.
Not old like me, you understand,
but older-better, wiser, deader:
Eternal life, salvation, all of that.
That’s not what I’m after—what comes after.
I’ve had a glimpse, caught a whiff.
That changes things, the small disaster.
Tenses shift.
Time is altered.
I have not been a good man.