poem for april

"poem for april (in memoriam)"

thank your god for the pills
if that's your thing
i, myself
am too old to believe in god

dizzy as hell but
still haven't had enough
almost drunk enough for prayer
almost ready to smile

as i stare at wooden crosses
i shake my head and inhale
these things scare me, why
don't they focus on the way he lived?

i have my own gods
may they die and go
they come in bottles and join me in ill times
wake me up for a short while and then send me back nowhere

i used to think i was breathing for no reason
but now i'm tired of hiding
i want lightning, i want fire
i want to break down doors and celebrate with things exploding

if god is your thing
i wish you joy, you won't regret it
i can't settle myself with easy ideas
some days i wish i could

I called this what I did because  April was a sad person who once said  "I'm too old to believe in god". We were drinking in the Sodo district of Seattle with someone (I don't remember who). Somehow we got on the subject of god and she said that. She was 55 or 56, I think. I told her I was going to use that line, and eventually I did. I think she might of been brilliant once but she wasn't in the short time I knew her. Her body and mind were pretty ravaged by drugs and alcohol. She was one of the craziest people I have ever known, but I loved her to death. I speak in the past tense because she died in a pretty horrible way last summer.
 The poem really has nothing to do with her but I wanted to put her name on it because she was the type of person the world forgets pretty much immediately. I think I wrote it within my first ninety days of sobriety last year. I was thinking a lot about A.A. higher power stuff and struggling. I came to terms with that stuff early this year. This poem is less reflective of how I feel now but I don't outright bash religion in it so I think it's OK
I think it's pretty good . The only thing I don't like is stanza three, line four. I tried to write: "why do they focus on the way he died instead of the way he lived". That didn't fit right but I think I got my point across well enough.