BLACK ANGELS

Sit in trees, eat dreams,
wear halos of gnats, spit blood through ebony smiles,
smoke cigarettes, embers flare in red coal eyes,
and with dragon bone breath shout obsidian curses
just outside the devil's gate.
Not evil, merely shadows of good,
sometimes howling like heaven's black banshees,
sometimes creeping like faint winds
on moonless, haunted nights,
they move in to caress, to hold
as tightly as the darkest night hour,
as tightly as the deepest death embrace.

October 31, 1997