Originally posted 1/19/2013.

On a physical search for God, angel,
devil, or some other entity
good or bad for us;

looking for transcendence
in an abandoned liquor store
behind the wasp-ruled chest cooler.  

Sitting behind it,
not caring for stings one bit, sucking
a pipe full of our last kind bud; 

searching for some guide
just as smooth and stony
as the pipeful.  

Seek and ye shall find —
was that the Bible or
our school librarian who said that?

We spark up another one. Need it 
to look for something deep
and certain in these ruins.

If TV alien hunters
are remotely not crazy
or greedhead hucksters 

when they
do the same 
among mounds and pyramids,

who would say
there’s no similar chance
of tracing the tracks

of extraordinary beings
here in the half-emptied rubble
of Sully’s Cash And Carry?

Maybe
these wasps are little
demigods.  

Maybe there’s a snake
in the cracked walk-in
the way there was in Eden,

the way there was in the vacant house
we hid out in last winter, the one
on Gutter Road.

God would so get
what we’re trying to do here.
I bet God’s a squatter too. In fact

I bet God and the Devil
both prefer ruins to churches
and sticky floors to clean holy beds.

Heaven is undervalued property and 
mostly abandoned, as is Hell; these days they mete out
paradise and punishment wherever they can.

I’m telling you, these days God’s likely
hiding in a pipe, and Satan
is probably hiding in a lighter

so let’s light up. Let’s seek them.
We’ll sit in the dust in the dark
and wait for the End Times to begin.