His Church of No Church by C.L. Liedekev

My friend Buck

had hairy fists,

a sausage of fingers, a bottle

that dangles like prey in talon.

A desperate grasp,

as winter invades the room,

presses its change

into everything it touches.

Uniform in its weight,

its breath as screed. It was

the leather jacket of his life.

He always pushed

shots and liquid acid, black outline

charcoals of cityscapes

and anger, crux of Frank Miller

as reference point, as the

horizon, constant escape.

Sometimes night-time slips

its harness pushes headlong

into an open plot point,

into the crescendo of lust,

of laughing and destination

as the broken tip of the knife.

He did not know he was a church,

a church of no church, a choir

of voices stapled open in gravel

and grave light. A fading baseline

settled along his teeth, placed

a note on each word, as he would

preach of anarchy and riot, of

confrontation as the art form,

of the moment the booze slips

its bonds, down his throat,

and opens my tiny life to possibilities.

C.L. Liedekev is a writer/propagandist who lives in Conshohocken, PA with his real name, wife, and children. He attended most of his life in the Southern part of New Jersey. His work has been published in such places as Humana Obscura, Red Fez, Open Skies Quarterly, River Heron Review, Vita Brevis, amongst others. His real goal is to make the great Hoboken poet/exterminator Jack Wiler proud. So far, so good.