Sex and Murder Magazine

By John Tustin

It’s the cool rainy wind again,
the shalaque, the formless dark,
exhausted and wet before the open window,
praying
for pneumonia,
praying
for salvation,
praying for deliverance
because the rain will stop
and the apparition of Jesus
will ascend
without you

and then it’s just
the morning
and the dissolving blaze
of noonday sun
and you close the window
and forget it all
in your hampered body,
your accumulating exhaustion,
your exploding mind,
and you go and do
what you must do
then,

the very things

that are killing you.