I remember sitting on the last train of the evening
that pulled sluggishly from the city towards midnight
and watching with interest the girls in the car
who wore black leather jackets and not much else
until I understood that this girl of seventeen
was crying about what a coward had done to her
in the public of a party
and her drunken friends shouted that she should not pity herself
because all men were swine and this was but a ritual
while her father called her unanswered phone.
I felt sick and turned my shameful eyes
and saw the devil sitting one row behind
and heard his whisper as he leaned over the seat:
"these pretty girls belong to me"
beneath the red flags of war
where the sweat drips free and the rifles clack
and I could stand with a straightened back
for honor was not no more.
But the devil was there-
where else would he be?
And he smiled and licked his long yellow teeth
and drank down their souls that they gave him for free
for pride is its own form of slavery.
So I was lost, for both glory and shame
are just branching paths whose ends are the same
For the strong and the weak, the blind and the lame
the devil gets them all.
So I drank and I lusted and I cursed and I cried
And I toyed with the pistol that hung at my side
and I dreamed of a fire that never would die.
But one day in city of plastic and trash
Helping a pregnant sister move past,
she pulled me into a chapel of mossy old bricks
that was dim in the daylight and glimmered with gold-
From the halos of fools two thousand years old.
They looked at me with eyes both grave and kind
They saw my anger, and my hurt little pride
And for the first time in my life,
I felt warm inside.
They called me to suffer, they called me to die.
To leave my wants and desires behind.They just sang in their chants to my heart, not my mind,
and this is the best that I could later transcribe:
Come and drink the blood of the Man-God,
that was poured out for those girls on the train
Come and eat the flesh of the Man-God,
that was broken for those boys in their pain
Come and and die with the Man-God,
who tramples on Death and Shame
Come and Live with the Man-God
who forever in glory shall reign.
So come all you beggars, you bastards and kings
you harlots and spinsters with arms wrapped in slings
Hell has been plundered, join me and sing
to the Man-God who offers us a far better thing
