“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
    -Albert King

Take our mingled bones and beat them on a drum.
Our song? We died before we lived, longing for a friend,
banished by mental lapses, grotesque illness,
poverty, bad fortune, and run-of-the-mill tragedy.
Some say God deserted us or we deserted God,
but even wild alligators and boa constrictors
have a wiser vision: Hungry? Swallow whatever moves!
Nothing we do will bring us luck.
We’ll live by loving what we can of ourselves:
brain with an arrow in it, endless fears, stump of a leg,
space-alien arms: all too strange or exotic.
And then there’s the startling way objects come alive
when we’ve lived alone with them long enough.
So take our mingled bones and beat them on a drum.
We died before we lived, longing for a friend.