ST. JUDE

If I've a belief in religion
I'm unaware what it is,
though I like the idea of
a patron saint of lost causes.

Life is unchanging change,
this life but a figment of my creation,
sometimes wandering out of control.

Love touches briefly, intensely,
but fades before the meaning of forever.
The heart is a lonely hunger.

Although I do not believe in fate,
I do have faith and trust in it.

And if you start
flaking off the pieces
you may find me
buried deep in plain view,
like an inverted ostrich.

Growing old holds no appeal, but
suicide
has been done to death.

So all there is to do
is wait,
standing ever solitaire
death will find me soon enough,
perhaps clutching me
in a fist of fearful panic,
or maybe caressing me
with cool fingers of bliss and release.

Or maybe death is merely
a doorway into nothing.

I don't know, but for now

I try to attain in my soul
a little peace of heaven
and to live and love this life
the best I can
in the obscure light of some
saint of lost causes.

May 7, 1995

(Note:I am not catholic, though my grandfather was.I became interested after reading some of Jim Carroll's autobiographies where he mentions a lot of the different saints-ones for lighthouse keepers, one for animals,ones for writers, and was intrigued by this saint for lost causes, which I sometimes felt like)