The Moon Hosts

​​                                                                                      

                                                          Death is a vocation. 

                                              It has abandoned silos in the North.​   

​​                                           It is to these darkly born Areas we still travel, 

​​

​​                                                                   bent back as St. Sebastian in sin’s queasy light.  ​​   

​​       On bored nights, funeral trains circle us.​​

​​   

​​  The conductors stuff cats in their habits as penance, 

                                                                                                and by their wise blood Charon is humbled.

​​  By this delivery, Lazarus was brought to die

​​   

​​  finally and struggling, giving voice

​                to the final Word. Death wraps eager hands 

​​  with reptile skin. It protects its children. Still

​​    as sullied Hosts, crooked reeds bind 

                                                                                                   an ill choir, the darkness is disturbed and moons rise 

                                                                                                                          in the eyes of the weak and willing. 

​​    Death is not staid, he’s fast spreading, sudden

     as wildfire on a derelict’s blanket.

​​    Death’s a ministry and the prayer books 

​​    it distributes are filled with dark braille, 

​​    a kind that could cure blindness 

                       but can’t be seen for very long.

John Thomas Allen is a 39-year-old poet and hopes to one day camp out in the Poe Museum in Baltimore. He likes hopes the political atmosphere in the US thins out, and that experimental poetry will continue on no matter what happens.