On Theism

Forty four.


Johnny told me hell and high water
Johnny lassoed down the moon
Johnny lied through gold capped teeth
And stalked off tall and slim into the dark
Caught every so often in the dirty old 
Streetlight yellow brick road, chewing on a bit of straw

Left me floating, wild and raw.
 
And eyes swole up and red as a bloodhound stare
I cried quiet and long to God
Triple dog dared him to come out and play.

But the machine said God doesn't exist.
(Son of a bitch shows up everywhere)

And I heard, Daddy writ in stone he's comin home this year

He's flanked in angel snipers
Peering through green gas masks 
Over top cloud trenches in the silent blue
And Daddy - His eyes are polished black stone
The kind they use on those wooden puppet men.
(Their Australian carvers say,
The sparkling beetle eyes can make even some sprung wood
look animated, sympathetic.)

And easy soldiers, 
Golden winged air force of his royal almighty
Oh come all yee faithless to the eye of the storm
Easy does it soldiers

When you point the most elegant of slim black barrels at me
When you slide em smooth through that sheet of cotton candy
Note: my arms full up with apple green snakes
Whose legs been stole for Daddy's game
Note: I'm naked, knowledge-hungry and shameless

Cause the boss don't exist.

Still,
I dreamed I saw God once.
She stood so regal, blood in her marrow
Bone in her flesh,
And yesterday's punk beneath her fingernails
In a faded blue floral dress
Before a papered wall,
Some crooked stripes running down the length.
And she bore down this camera lense,
Gunman cocked and ready behind it.

God's halo hovered over greasy hair
And poets brain
And mamas hips
And I fell at her feet reaching
For her bleached peaches and cream feet screaming

Dear God, you don't exist.

Some time later, reclining on the fold out steps to her dingy trailer
Balancing a smoke between her fingers
God murmured her name was Marlene Dietrich but her friends just called her
Patti Smith.