The Man God

 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"

So I traveled far to where grim men stand

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

 

 

 

 

Five Hundred Hours of Midnight

 

Five hundred hours of midnight 

Would not count my paces ere the dawn

Back and forth I walk and wonder

How God will tear the sky asunder

Rend the storm and come down. 

Stand, you weak-kneed children of commerce

Find your fire and stand! 

If not here, backs to the last patch of daylight, 

Facing the oncoming sheet of midnight

If not now, then where?

Your fathers were fat and lazy cowards

Who hesitantly raised a flag against the world

And stood, with scowls at their own achievement

Humbled emperors in their raiment

Laid low the mighty in their hour in heaps untold

But for all their failings; greed, avarice and shame, 

They clasped their swords with hands unyielding

Fought and lost and were sent reeling

And fought again and won, this little land

And we who eat from vineyards we did not tend to

And fields we did not sow

Now found again where they left it:

A rusty sword, a defunct musket

And the call to march, and stand!

The Girl with the Shy Smile

Around the new years, when I was beginning to think that beauty was something we invented to survive as a species, a young woman crept up on me without warning and taped this poem to a hole in my sleeve. I wasn't able to get her name, but I think I will recognize her if I see her again, by the way she smiles. 

Her eyes are clear like crystal,

Her brows are straight and true,

Her lips are as full as the summer moon,

and as soft as the summer dew. 

She wears a shirt of satin, 

and a jacket of dark green,

and she walks beneath the shadowed trees

wherever a star is seen. 

 

I dreamt that I walked with her,

and she whispered words to me,

words of love and longing, 

of faith and loyalty.

 

I woke then and I wept then, 

that she was not in my arms,

but still I know she walks alone,

in my dreams and in my heart.

Beneath a Star in Bethlehem

While traveling in the east, I was received by some good people who insisted that even though I had just celebrated Christmas, it was actually time to celebrate the birth of our Lord a second time two weeks later. Since they were providing cookies and cake, I obliged them. I even got this poem as a gift from a mysterious figure calling himself 'Father Frost'.

 

Beneath a star in Bethlehem,
A king is born tonight
To lift the weight of all the world
A babe sleeps sound and tight.

Beneath a humble stable roof
A Virgin mourns her birth
Her son has come to bleed and die,
To bear a cross and tear the sky,
And bring heaven down to earth.

Above the stars of Bethlehem,
The angels sing for joy
Let shepherds quake and kings bow down,
The gates of hell shake at the sound,
Of this sleeping baby boy.