Better, all in all, the god we know—
broken, drunk, in agony, at bay,
yet undistracted from the mystery
of our own suffering; and if they show
it’s last, to blunder wild-eyed through the screen
with Stop the chemo! He just needs to fart!
or gently intimate it might be smart
to swap your Tolstoy for a magazine.
We too have known that three o’clock abyss
between the differential and the kiss
where a man must face the smaller man within
or remember where he stashed the Vicodin.
O let that thousand-yard-and-one-inch stare
see through us too. For we don’t have a prayer.