Slamsongs

1.     Redemption Denied

I

I am wondering why I desire to be oppressed.

The Great Fish Poseidon swallows the Kraken,

swallows Leviathan, Thetis, swallows the sea,

then itself,

swallows,

then drowns when all the liquid is gone

and the great desert is swallowed by the jaws of time

         and I sit forlorn, missing you,

         missing you so deeply,

         my love, my love.

If I die in this prison of T’amut

You will teach me to live once again,

never to swallow when the salty water strokes my lips

and I will hold you desperately,

knowing I need not die

when the salty water scrapes my eyes.

II

I build integrity by trusting.

I have surrendered to you that puts the barbed wire

around the perimeter and barks orders

with all the care the predator has for its prey.

I have snuck up on the cross like Jesus

with a megaphone announcing his return

to the sound of the jackboot

and nailed myself in, bleeding out

like the sun’s light at dusk.

I trust in the stench of flesh rotting

in the dark recesses left by artillery

on the plains of some distant war

because I have a nose for decay.

I trust that when my father died

He knew his son;

But he never could

Because he could never see what his son could not.

I trust the boot in the face

and the rage that ticks in the bomb

and the bomb’s blast that rips through

the sum of my race, which comes to nothing

when the sun so insincerely does arise

over the fields of fallen corn.

I put aside the search for you

who waits in the garden, outside Elysium,

for inside Her golden gates there is nothing,

Not. A. Thing.

I trust that love is but a mirror on a wall

that lacks the glass to reflect anything at all.

I trust my tears are barbarous beasts that climb within my brain

like wasps that lay their eggs then fly away to their own gain.

I look inside the mythic realm to see the temple of the gods again

but they are tangled weeds and iron

their sacred ground is scarred with mines

awaiting some courageous soul to go

where only death would tread.

I trust I will not venture there

nor get up on some doomed dark cross

but understand my father’s point

that vigilance is but the price of love.