A PRETEND SABBATH IN RENO

 

A PRETEND SABBATH IN RENO

 

Fancy seeing houses of prayer

called churches here in the belly
of a desert that deserted prayer
when it offered gold, wine, women,
songs, endless carousing into nights
proclaiming a paradise regained
where raucous laughter and gasps
of lust and wanton desire spill out
of parlour balconies above streets
that promise to snake into a haven
on asphalt and the promise land
of a Sodom and Gomorrah reprise
when defiant joie d’vivre was a
cackle of coupling or a lusty gargle
of wine drowning the din of anger
thrown like fists into a dark sky.
We will be happy again, we will,
or perish trying to make pretend
castles, pyramids, even churches, real.
 

---Albert B. Casuga

Las Vegas, 03-29-14