Castaways, we drank and drifted 
finally landing at Luther's Cafe
to drink more beers and fill our bellies with burgers.

The way to the can was laid with hazards:
 table corners menaced me,
 the normal flat floor held
 secret steps for tripping.

Ah. I made it to the four by four closet,
with bare-naked bulb, incommodious commode,
and grimy written walls.

I passed my water,
panting the praise of bloated bladders
to the gods of urination,
and surveyed the scripts of felt pen
and ball point onto flat white paint.

Off in a corner, there it was, a little by itself.
 “On Io, we drank the blood of Christ
 We cast the ashes of superstition into the solar wind.”

Back at our table I told it to you.
"What's that mean?" you said.
"Let me translate. Io is an island," I fibbed.
"where only by shipwreck people come:
where you and I drink together."
I raised my mug between us.
You clinked it with yours.

"This is the blood of Christ we drink.
What we cast away is the bullshit superstition
that believes in nailing down Danger,
denying its ever present power to kill and resurrect.
Along with ourselves, ashes that we are,
we fling the exclamation pointed finger at 
and into the sun god's spirit-wind."

"I don't understand," you said.
That's okay, (I knew) you do.

1981