Friday Night at Seven

Kneeling made the room feel regal.
You became a staircase of scars
I used my tongue and hands to climb
all the way to heaven.

Hell is the way it felt to live
as if the mind was King,
as if landmines left by thoughts
were flowers to be picked.

Saluting cruelty’s softer side,
something tender, almost kind,
raised me to my feet like Christ,
pierced by heavy metal.

Terror asked permission
to laugh like us:
naked tricksters gagging on time,
in moments we made matter.

Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems are forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, New Plains Review, Flint Hills Review, Plainsongs, and Book of Matches. His book, Waxing the Dents, is from Brick Road Poetry Press.