Prayer for the States

In desolation nights praying with careful palms never together.
Palms praying, forever separate as the wasted heights of the Petronas Towers,
Praying for self, for touch
Praying to no one, the great cosmonaut between the Moon.

Praying with the hands, broken hands, that built ground-zero monuments on victims last words,
Built monuments to end the cold era of condolence,
Built monuments to forget commemorating forgetfulness-the great glass rememberer

Praying with hands that put quarters to the cavities of the nuclear gumball-machine,
Hands that put coins to the autistic merry-go-round and suicide galleries.
Hands that said yes to the atom-bomb rainbow and abbreviated democracy,
Hands that prayed in fields of presidential bovine, mission accomplished.

Praying with hands-poor bandaged finger-tips-stomped beneath the industrial hoof,
Lured to ruin by the sanguine shawls of the organic toreador in the government octagon.
Palms spat upon by bourgeois sloth and brushed raw by toothed diamond manicure,
Palms of sorrow and grief and desolation what-did-I-ever-do.

Praying in rows, praying for God the dollar, pennies, twenty-three cents,
Praying in the skeleton, the blue, pale white
bled dry licking red blood from the cracks of sidewalks for a last taste.
Praying at death still with children's hands.

O holy arbiter, the clock-tower, never let me down,
time-ill brother immortal-promiser forever, I pray to you
Forever true, forever away of black hope and covet and mercy.
Your's is the only honest kill I will ever embrace.

Farewell to Galilee-capital hill, white-wash sanitarium
Farewell to the zoo-uptown, the knife
Farewell children, all, man we have never known
Farewell the hands-soft sweet innocent hands-that pray evermore