the edges and the banks of the declined phosphorous gem touting stars and the like

don’t stand too engrossed in the engravings
of the statues and silhouettes like broken flowers
there are batteries the sand where the tide moves
like a trick of the mind and the hurt’s worst
when faith becomes a brick in the imagination
and you stand trial before the heavens’s east

there will be no lawyers that have not seen
the hell they aim to position you towards
like stolen phrases from a past of disbelief
where no robbery could have ever occurred
or so you tell yourself in the sleepless morning
nodding along to the pacific west cool trains

but then years later you find God kinda liked you,
perhaps for your doubts, for your curtains
and the second soul of a shop lifted above the firehouse
where there stood a woman near jumping
the pie was misinterpreted, if only all marriages
could include a third act with whispers of dirt
dirt like stars in the doorway that laugh in the morning
tempting fate all the way into reason