JESUS WEPT.

I.

My friend wants me to apply for the Peace Corps with him, 

he says we are ta-veren, greater minds - 

I promised only to be the joker to his batman,

the juggernaut with the blackthorn heart, no piledriver 

copilot, only tinker-terns to pick the bonefish gray

and trimmed in my jailhouse wake - 

I, who climb hills to feel the cold sweat seep into 

sockets on the trip back down, mocking Sisyphus 

for choice, choosing arms over arteries as the blood

seeps into safety nets. 

So swing low sweet oracle and rend off your clothes,

carry me back to the bar at Sleason and Bouldecrest, 

prop up with puppetry my rapscallion hackle, 

losing lost again in The Floating World - 

oooohhh the whiskey bitter, the supple amber irony

of eating oneʼs own words, call it love - 

and sheathe my shaking body until I quake no more: 

heaving reeling, look to the sky like a fiddle and

hold on, hold out, someone or other might hear 

that batting lash averages mean median things as

I stumble to slumber alone, shaking shaking shaking, 

where I can disregard words and replace them with 

SOUNDS.

II.

Sounds, reticent with hobgoblin resonance, reveal a 

heart too keen on keening, the keelhaul crawl of crickets 

cross sprucewood and horsehair strung sturm und drang, 

drowning in Souther drawls as they lose themselves 

to British Twee Power. It was I, 

the American Oisin in Morgul, 

walking sidelong with Samedi, died on the bayou, 

with the Backwoods Bastards and Old Curmudgeons 

queuing up for the downstroke cakewalk, 

loa low voices droning deep pagan wavers, 

radiant in the firelight of The Wicker Man - 

as goats bleat bahbah blacksheep with some 

jalapeno 100-proof heaviness, I tip my skull cap 

to the boneface top hat as I settle down for a 

long summerʼs nap, pulling reaversʼ ripped sleeves 

to my cheek as Baron and his corvid companions 

crow, raven, and rook watch Mamn quiver, 

he croaks like an oak oar salesman - 

“Iʼll show you the life of the mind...”

III.

The life of the mind, becoming ocean, 

breaching with a hunchback wail as spine shards 

clack against ribs, the husky heartbeat of the bodhran, 

leaping up out of war, Shermanʼs Hell to the sea - 

oh mare mare quite contrare, 

wash my feet like Jesus and 

batter rafts like Yahweh, witness my 

last horse in the sand turning tail and trotting 

clumps up to sting my eyes, the lachrymose oracle 

rain oʼer me, lightning a smokestack to 

center solemn solace - it kicks like a mule but

 helps carry the load to the city in the bottom

 of the well, LIUNA union offices 

brimming over with devils beating 

skins of their sanguine sins, hearts alive! 

For when the leviathans break, the seas will shake, 

and what beautiful ruins this city will make, 

cold driftwood if I could but I canʼt so 

Iʼll creep.

IV.

Creep rock steady over cobblestones, 

the wharf aglow in moth-light, where the bilge-rats 

whisper sedulously that nothing is true and 

all is permitted. See Israel Hands hold court 

in the alery, sentencing all to the stocks for 

the black-spot exchange - forgive me Captain 

for I have sinned, its been a few pints since I 

tipped the deep end. With a ski mask over 

my skull and Fifteen Covnts of Arson I watched 

snakeheads swim the Amistad mile and hoped 

a revolt would result before the kraken felt 

the tremolo of unnatural terror, fleeing fleet 

on bikeback, that sea-shanty town, 

shrieking Blitzkrieg Stuka swoop, 

Holland 1945 Iʼm alive! Counting and 

breathing, maypanzerous still quivering quills, 

the Prince of a Thousand Enemies, no longer 

hirsute but still son of the hare, digging, 

listening, running on The Long Patrol, 

bleeding red Irish bulls: 

As long as Iʼm dead they canʼt take me alive!

V.

Canʼt take me alive, my salad days with 

a sponge of vinegar vignettes, a brace of 

conies fallen, my good Great Eye down 

on the street, where the rain bitches sniff out 

bum cigarettes - one stopped me to explain 

her better-day beauty, I smiled at the pavement, 

rattled by the -how-did-it-get-so-low, the pendulous 

and reverent remnants of youth.

What if no she said no she wonʼt No? 

Then my Sierra Leonese sister never graced 

these stone shores, blown back my ballistics,

trbucheved to the bone, no Sunn to rise and 

pass through Stonehenge hands, 

nothing lost, nothing high gained, 

Marshalled Orangeman claiming the Vox 

populi, loud but not so Hiwatt as nailbombs 

or Sandsʼ silence, silence that is simply the 

sound of words all the way lived.

VI.

All the way lived, a life to own the sky 

beating black coursing green in The Waking World, 

trembling eyelids shut wide open in the life of the mind - 

I climbed out all the skin that drenched me, haunting me 

down as the seas opened up and 

I tried to find my way home, and Iʼm sorry, and I miss you - 

following salient songs of whales past 

The Baronʼs balefires in the city of the dead 

disposing of themselves, Gorbag, Shagrat and me, t

he dead eyes and murmuring hearts of those 

reveling in the absurdity that engulfs them, 

the cackling saints starving in the belly 

of cold sweats and whiskey shakes, the 

weeping Arimatheans mourning those 

who have no one on their day of the locust, 

those peaceful corpses, my friend.

I wrote this in September 2010.