Prayers and Midnight Offerings

I.
 
Every decade ticked off
between fingers
counting beads like raindrops
caught
marking the passage of memories
tattooed into grey matter
in black and blue ink
one pinpoint at a time;
every decade a procession of prayers
giving thanks
for a constellation of scars
like keloidal clouds,
puffy cumulonimbus Rorschach abstracts
hinting of myriad adventures: 
abusive lovers battled
like knife wielding ogres,
whom remain victorious
despite the wreckage rescued;
giving car crash university
the ol' college try,
where the only degrees
are in physics, and anatomy,
and the few who survive
to graduate
spend a lifetime
crippled by debt;
battering a crooked runic protest
into a forehead
hammered on marble steps
rather than ascending
to accept Holy Orders;
acts of amateur surgery
attempting to repair
a regularly broken heart;
railroad tracks sewn
over ruined cities of bone
sacrificed to disprove mortality --
new trains of thought
carrying proof to the contrary
daily preventing
bulletproof delusions;
et cetera;
et cetera...
a whole astronomy in flesh
providing reason to give thanks,
though the white knight didn't win,
the student flunked out a debtor,
the possibility of saint- or godhood
gone --
in nomine patri et fili spiritu sancte,
capiamus cerivisiam?;
and the heart still breaks down
despite ingenious acts of restoration
(or perhaps because of);
yet,
despite it all,
the sands of time,
blown by winds of change,
erode this clay
into something more than
a mute cube. 
So, thankful.
 
II.
 
Miles of gold
To fill
Every god-mold
Inspired by wine
Left near
Incense at the shrine,
Masking the fruit
Rotting
To feed the world tree's root.