Hear this:

Now do I recall

Walking with one hand dragging down the wall

Of a hallway in a midnight hotel in

Paradise, Nevada.

I had a song in my head that I couldn’t get out and when I stepped in the elevator

Going up The man there in his suit and the lady there in her swimming costume smiled and mentioned that outside the whole world might’ve ended and Sinatra would still be playing in the Sands Hotel and Casino in 1953.

Another man told me Jesus loves me and I said even here and he said even so and when I fell in the bathroom with one hand crooked on the side of the tub, heaving over the edge and fell in like Simeon overboard I thought Jesus might have looked away if he had any dignity.

Does He watch his son’s disagreeable actions?

We certainly do our best to hide them.

I heard the voice of a meretrix in the next room (a shame because she was so goddamned attractive)

Explain why she was closer to God than her pastor, than any pastor

And when I climbed into bed

She sat there too, said

What was the difference between God and a dime-store call girl?

She’ll still be there at the end.

I remember her.

She could laugh until she fell asleep.

She could stay up laughing at the midnight cartoon reruns

Of my childhood and

Ordering deep-fried room service

And she was more real than anything else in all Paradise.

Once I took her shopping in the supermarket and she didn’t step outside the candied aisle

We ate cereal out of the box with our hands in our mouths

And her lips tasted like powdered sugar and

Corn starch and lip gloss.

I haven’t tasted anything more profound,

A Eucharist of modern living, broken, shared out for you and for you and for you

And for many.

In the morning she was gone

And so was my wallet.