Between Cities

Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters.... - Revelation 22:14-15

A voice whispered in my dream:
Either you love or you're happy,
but never both.

I don't know how to live
without the dogs,
without faces writhing
in the bone-spurred night, bituminous
duels of prophets
and scoundrels, flayed
condoms in gutters,

without the infinite idols
to which we bow
in our desperation, shadow-dancing gods
that every day destroy
the city I cannot
live without.