by Bud Sturguess

Hell on my breath,
I told you
don't bother dreaming

Be a pallbearer, not a dreamer
I said
The world needs pallbearers

There's a No Trespassing sign at the base of the Mount of Olives
The government's quite tired of you slinking around like a ghoul
Gazing up into heaven
They summoned me to come and take you home

In that awful desert, pacing about,
wondering what to do about you and your malady, 
I collapsed
A combination of the heat
and your ridiculous dream

Then I saw, with my own eyes
An angel, majestic and terrifying
The kind conjured by
the criminally insane
The earth quaked
and every pallbearer on duty
abandoned their posts
lest the earth open 
and they be swallowed by the dark

Hell on my breath,
I told you
don't bother dreaming
In dust and ashes
I repent.

Bud Sturguess was born in the small cotton-and-oil town of Seminole, Texas. He now lives in his “adopted hometown,” Amarillo. Sturguess has self-published several books, his latest being the novel Sick Things. He lives on disability benefits and collects neckties. Sturguess’s work appears in New Pop Lit, Duck Duck Mongoose, as well as the upcoming print anthologies Mid/South from Belle Point Press and The Daily Drunk’s From Parts Unknown.