Revelator
The laces of his ribs caged
A heart blue as a robin’s egg
Abandoned like a boat half full of water
Kept from sinking by its tether to the harbor
Like a willow spilling downward
Or a hand to holy water
His back bent like a reed against the storm.
He shrank until he wasn’t there at all.
Tell us what you saw, John
Drinking wormwood water from a brandy glass
Oh, John, won’t you tell us what you saw
I saw a beast with bright red eyes
Eyes as bright as a liquor store sign
I saw a beast, tall and wide
Tall and wide as the water tower’s high
I swear… I swear that’s what I saw
His tired eyes had narrowed
Sullen, sunken, lined in shadow
Like a flower bending to a setting sun
John wondered if his time had finally come
His kudzu veins had hardened
Ever since the drinking started
His life had been a quiet passing storm
John sought to leave his mark upon the world
Tell us what you saw, John
Clutching a pen in your trembling hand
Oh, John, won’t you tell us what you saw
I saw a beast with seven heads
A head for every emperor of Rome
I saw a beast with a crown of horns
A crown of horns and a chandelier of jaws
I swear… I swear that’s what I saw
After the War
With a switch knife he cut his lip
And gave me a rubella red kiss.
His hands sway with my hips
until we’re both too drunk to dance.
He said maybe in another life
I could have been a misfit’s wife
And when his ghost moved on
He’d come back as a wild dog
One year later he was gone
He never came back from the war
My love, he never came back from the war
Love is nothing one can hold or have
Like a secret whispered in my hand
I still carry a piece of him
Saved all his letters in a reefer tin
Kept his switch knife in my winter coat
And when I walk from the train alone
In the palm of my sweaty hand
I hold that knife and think of him
A few letters and his ghost
Were all that came back from the war
My love, were all that came back from the war
Stepped off the train into the evening air
The creak and clang of the platform stairs
A stranger’s steps fell close behind
A gloved hand grabbed my arm tight
My wrist twisted out my switch knife
And caught the glare of the streetlamp’s light
Before I thrust it in that stranger’s throat
I heard a wild dog moan low
Your warm kiss on my knife and wrist
It’s like you came back from the war
My love, it’s like you came back from the war
Flat
When the world was flat
Before smoke filled the air, trees shadowed the land
When the world was flat
In fire and rain, god spoke onto man
There were no whalebone ships or slaves below deck
When the world was flat
When the world was flat
Noah’s ark sailed on a dinosaur’s back
When the world was flat
There were no broken bones or illness at all
Oceans spilled across maps like a tipped champagne glass
When the world was flat
Round as a wrecking ball chained to a crane
Swinging lead-heavy here to there with its nose in the air
In its clumsy pirohuette, making rubble of this and that
Now all of the magic has gone
From the blue bejeweled world that was
When the world was flat
Empires crumbled, rose and changed hands
When the world was flat
Miles stretched farther across water and sand
Men were quite small… only six inches tall
When the world was flat
I met a man who walked the world’s edge
Stood where the oceans poured into the black
When I asked him why, he replied back:
"everyone has a line in their path
That they can’t toe around or step past
It took years to find mine, but you’ll find yours in time
Just as I did when the world was flat"
Leslie Ann Merrimac
Leslie Ann Merrimac had bruises all around her neck
And a silver trail of latch-hooks down her back
Strings of pearls tied to each
Tethered to her husband’s reach
She seldom felt a slack upon her leash
As a child she
gathered critters large and small
Built devices
for dismembering them all
It began in ’91, when Leslie Ann was rather young
Her father had passed on and she moved out to Bloomington
Feeling desperate and alone
She thought she had found love
In the strong but silent, somewhat violent preacher’s eldest son
He was a monster
With a ghoulish overbite
Raised a hand to her
To keep her wandering eye in line
Leslie Ann Merrimac dressed head to toe in funeral black
Never shared her loving husband’s bed
Slept in corners standing upright
As he gripped the pearls tight
Pains splashed down her spine throughout the night
He would beat her
As his father had done to him
With a leather strap
Left rosy welts across her chest
Leslie Ann Merrimac woke to find her husband dead
One winter’s eve he passed on in his sleep
Rigor mortis had set in
And while struggling from his grip
Bent a hook and in her spine, broke off a pin
Pearls rained down
Bounced along the hardwood floor
A frosty numb crept in
And her eyes fell closed once more
On a cemetery hill
Along a row of pines
She was buried by her loving husband’s side
Follow It Down
When I walked on my hind legs
Snow-covered roads and frozen lakes
Temptation came and took my hand
I went into the woods with him
When the Lord took him from me
Birds rained dead and fish bellied up from the sea
Like candle wax, my fallen tears
Dried on my cheek and lingered there
Cast my heart in hell’s wired jaw
Slick my hide with open cuts
I’ll crawl through and follow it down
The road has melted with the thaw
My tender fate in mercy’s claw
The storm door whine of years gone by
Send me your flood, famine and fire
Cast my heart in hell’s wired jaw
Slick my hide with open cuts
I’ll crawl through and follow it down
Left Hand Tied
Press your Cheshire grin
To my blistered lips again
Even a guillotine
deserves a second chance
To kiss your egg white throat
And your winter brittle bones
I’ve seen the flock of eyeless hungry birds
Under your wool coat
Poking throught the button holes
They sang above your every whispered word
As a boy, I knew wrong from right
As a boy, I was humble, I was shy
I was silent, obedient and kind
Back when my left hand was tied
From the warmth of our wet kiss
Trickled, dripping from my lips
Thinking of it now, I swoon and sway
Like the birches in the thinning wood
Between the wicked and the good
In firefly blood, I’ve written both our names
Everything I Touched Caught Fire
The tender breathing belly of an orange undercloud
The scrutiny of a streetlamp over me
Took a breath of smoke from the heavy autumn air
Just outside the court house, finally free
Pawned a driftwood clarinet and a silver chain I had
Bought a greyhound ticket heading west
Underneath the blanket of a lost and found box jacket
My head against the window trying to rest
Gonna scar my face in a different place
or maybe wear my hat down low
Pull a stick-up job at some five-and-dime
Keep slithering from town to town
Shuffled along the shoulder of an unmarked road
Tried to catch my breath outside Des Plaines
Slipped into a Laundromat to grab some baggy clothes
Then slept out on the ashtray by the lake
A couple evenings later, in some half-deserted bar
Some black-eyed molly bought me watered drinks
A couple hours later, swapped stories in her kitchen
While waiting for leftovers to reheat
Gonna change my ways
Try and be some place
Try and fight the urge to go
Get an honest job at some nine to five
And maybe stick around
Early the next morning, she called a friend of her late husband
A foreman at some plastics factory
Got me some shit job for under-the-table cash
Just until I got back on my feet
I could picture Molly crying through black eyes
Even though I hadn’t wronged her yet
Every time I ever managed landing on my feet
I’d start looking for a cozy place to sit
Gonna scar my face in a different place
or maybe wear my hat down low
Pull a stick-up job at some five-and-dime
Keep slithering from town to town
Cut my hands trimming flash
Burned both my hands
Foreman came to ride me about the rate
The hopper wound up jammed
I overfilled the press
The foreman sent me home for the day
I couldn’t face Molly, so I walked around for hours
Until I started fixing to leave
A day or two later, I read in some paper
About a fire at that same factory
Gonna scar my face in a different place
or maybe wear my hat down low
Pull a stick-up job at some five-and-dime
Keep slithering from town to town