Select any of the below for full text of poems:
PRAYER AT THE MASKED BALL
Be my god,
if you don’t mind
being asked.
And if you don’t mind
being asked
to dance
at this masked ball,
allow me
to introduce myself—
I’ve worn this face
since birth,
and now I want
it off.
I need a god
to remake me,
not in his image,
but in the shape
of boys
I ached to be:
the cresting
wave-like pompadour
of Johnny Villar,
Terence Kelly’s
stiff upper lip,
the name alone
of Artie Robb.
If you do
become my god,
let the chandelier’s
refracted constellations
strut across
each dancer’s mask,
those romantic glances
of cut crystal
giving us
our best chance
of living life
as someone else.
Replace my skin
with a pelt
from smelted ore—
I’m tired
of flinching
from a score
of imagined hurts.
You always were
and always will be,
you have an infinite future
and a past as long—
so, as you glide across
this ballroom floor,
lift your disguise
and show me who you are.
I’m not asking you
to be the god
of a saint,
just of a minor sinner.
And really, who have I ever hurt?
(Yes, but long ago.)
Be my god
and let me recall
the good days
in our home,
not the drama of gin
before dinner
and brandy later,
where hour after hour,
the bear
went over the mountain
only to find
another mountain.
I don’t need a large part
of you,
just that corner
that loves puns,
a kind of school-crossing
god,
the jester
who invented sex,
the magician
who pulls a man
out of a boy
and a new man
out of him.
My god! Good god! God forbid!
God asked to damn
everything on earth—
the lost ring, shut store,
stripped screw
and missing oar,
all who walk
on two legs,
four,
with tail or without,
employ wings,
slide on stomachs,
swim.
God asked to bless
everything we eat
and both sides
of savage nation-beasts.
God,
on whose knee
I will sit in heaven,
please be my god
before the certain curtain call.
I know
I’ve created you,
and I know
it’s the other way around,
but since these are only
pleas on a page
don’t punish me
too harshly
for being,
in a manner of speaking,
your god.
I made you
to remake me
and then
take me
to someone
who will love me,
if it’s possible
to love a man
in a mask
who asks god
to dance
at the masked ball.
john skoyles 