Raising our Glass

branding irons are to be used
in the suture of our commutable contusions

only yesterday I exhaled your dingy smoke
and it irradiated like frankincense

we made a toast with Helena’s bowl
to the true nepenthes in Homer

and retired our sorrow and debt
to the aliment of all heart-eating vice

but ended up mutually misaffecting each other
with songs and slurs until you broke my skull open

which it turned out, no reparation would suffice
unless the injury remained rational

Solomon himself would have offered me his cup
because, the onlookers thought i was a ghost

although you and i knew different--that atheism
like ours could be maintained by heathens alone