1.
This year for Lent,
I am 
  giving up.

(I wasn't religious
 until I found God in bed one night.)

Last night, last week, last month--
	  [As that tiny death arrives again,
	   the world turns white-but-
	     my eyes roll forward, once again.
	   He asked, "You frown
	      when you come?"
               And I'm forced to answer,
	      yet again.
	   I told him--"No! You don't understand;
	      it's an explosion--
               the mushroom cloud that ends
	      The World.
               My head rolls back as I watch--
            	   I'm upside down.
	   So really,
	      I smile."]

And it was watching 
   --looking at--
that upside down smile
 that made me
                     realize.

That I have been nowhere.
That I have had no one.
That I will have no one.
That no one will be mine.


2.
But then, after he watched
      the end of the world,
I saw the white too.

But the white I saw wasn't
   an end--
It was the beginning.

White light envelopes the sky
[White light envelopes everything]
and it's then that I realized, 
met, acquired, knew
God.

But during my climax,
for the first time,
I understood.

3.	
I understood that quintessential French term
  that I have encountered so often.
Le petit mort,
  my own little death came in a period of
    transcendence?
  Nothing that deep.
	It really just emphasized the fact that I was empty.
And not empty in a sort of 
            romanticized way that most of us 
					fags imply.

N.
“So in finding God I like,
denounced the world.
And now it's like, an obsession 
      or something.”
	
Ash Wednesday has passed
Good Friday is over
and for Lent,
I'm giving up.