Cancun Beach, Mexico

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What kind of God has made this sapphire tide 
stroking the white sand mouth of Yucatan, 
outrageously extravagant, a place 
fit for the baptism of God or kings 

and yet has made the lizard-woman, begging 
before the church’s splintered threshold, curled, 
diseased, her hand a darting tongue for coins, 
who made me also, stepping over her 

in my designer jeans and gold-chained neck? 
I look beyond the pierce of yellow eyes 
thinking: to feed her begging is no help, 
she made her bed, now let her lie in it. 

The church is dark and whispering with nuns 
shuffling in shadows. Sallow candles light 
a waxen, dying christ hanging above 
a garish mash of dusty plastic flowers. 

Holy water, wash me; sanctify 
this golden blessedness that weighs my neck. 
What have we done to be sapphires or lizards, 
smooth or splintered, stars or stones? 

Seagulls don’t know about inequities 
running sores, gold stiff necks — they’re beggars 
feeding, as we, on the refuse of a world 
washed with the mercy of His frightful beauty, 

a world of splashed vermillion on a dark sky, 
wasted and waiting for that one whose wings 
will pierce the sky, reckless as they 
and spill the raging sunsets on the world.