One of Us Must Marry

There’s only one way to reconnect - in church,
like birds, rain running off sacrament.
Long walk through mainstreet of desolate
past - green shutter shop fronts, empty units,
beer park.

The church welcomes the Irish, St Joseph’s gentle
charity.
        The meekness of the Virgin.

I have excitable fingertips, feelers for love,
crow wing umbrella hung from arm. Whose
hooks are in?

She is love, where we had none, so sunk ourselves
in mental void, all night, in music, or magic.
Where we connected like telepaths, we embrace,
re-embark, smile, embarrassed.

The church is a holy home for names we lost.

Wooden doors, glass, porcelain statuettes,
an empty pew behind a father friend.
The groom turns his head and we recollect
in an instant - vinyl hashish turntable, burnt
guitar gullibility, string fingers.
Friends arrive like multi-layered voices,
looped, smoked bedroom luminous.

Now I’m not nervous or exhausted, but you are,
& I’m empathic and easily squeezed.
We suck it up until Houstie arrives, puppy dog
Houstie.

Later you talk of arses you’d like to surf,
waves of memory shoring in the DJ;
I’m nostalgic, conscious of more than one
layer of experience hung on a time string.

What an awful seat facing the wall, but we huddle
for a photograph, dancefloor background,
bowtie babies, sweetheart sister, married six years.

We took acid, smoked hashish, drank rum,
longed for women, all in a tender ball
of endless, gorgeous night.

The goodbyes are as sweetened as your child,
little ball of blonde. I squeeze your sister.
We’re as interconnected as water, wedding fluid,
consecrated wine.

The taxi driver lays out knives on the backseat
of the cab ride home.
I’m full of pity poignant & enigmatic now, with my
talk of enlightenment, waiting to be drenched by
group essence as it reconfigures every
one of us moves on.