Three Days After Pentecost, 2010

The tongues of fire are gone from my head
Leaving a burned out brain with smoking eyes,
Maybe I was drunk on Sunday at 9 a.m.
In fact, I know I was,
New wine in an old wineskin,
Bells pealing in my torched head
Like Thunder and Lightning,
Choirs singing alleluias
Opening the doors of perception,
But now I hear the same old babel,
People speaking in tongues
That I don’t understand,
Prophesying my future
That had already been set,
While I, in my old man visions,
Peer backwards into space and time
To insure that the visions come true,
That these visions are not merely women’s dreams
That exist in the rarified air of memories,
But that they have the potential of miracles
That I, myself, have the power to create,
Waiting to be ignited by the Phlogiston
Guaranteed by the Messiah,
Sealed by the Sanhedrin
Who peer out through the eyes of the Skull
That is marked forever by the Cross,
Wondering why their visions failed them,
That they didn’t see It coming,
That they missed their own chance for immortality
So that I, Stephen, could become immortal.

Blues For A Gray Day

Catfish jumpin’
Offa my plate
Could be luck
Could be fate
Could be love
Could be hate
Blues for a gray day

Policeman standin
Beside my car
Wants to know
Who you are
Got a warrant
For your arrest
Gonna put me
To the test
Blues for a gray day

Switchman’s sleepin
Out on the main line
Engineer thinks
Everything is fine
Brakeman’s screamin
Gotta stop this train
Round the corner
It’s startin to rain
Blues for a gray day

You left me, baby
Standin all alone
All night long
I cry and moan
Someday, baby
You’ll come back again
Tell me all about
Just where you been
Blues for a gray day
Blues for a gray day
Blues for a gray day.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge Linking St. Louis to East St. Louis

Ghost Ship Of The Mississippi

The Admiral, a beat up, tin woodsman of a ship
Stares from its moorings in the Mississippi,
A catch-all for whatever detritus the River brings
Downstream from its basin:
Trash, trees, tires,
Even bodies now and then,
Snagging on the port side
For people in the Lumiere Casino to view
Until washed away by higher waters of the spring,
It’s robotic, dented appearance looks like something
Out of the movie,The Day The Earth Stood Still,
Wanting to chant the “Klaatu Barada Nikto” mantra
To those who enter into its bowels to shoot craps,
It’s tragic view of South St. Louis
Is framed in the pinkness of the
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Bridge
That connects Historic St. Louis
To a swamp of blackness on the other side,
A swamp where hideous stories
Of incarcerations, mayhem, and murder dwell,
The Admiral has no view of the Silver Arch,
The Gateway to America,
A turnstile of advancing pink-skinned people
With a one-way ticket
To the Western Frontier of Freedom
For a chosen few whose destiny
Was written on the manifest
Of slave ships from Liberia,
The Admiral, with its cargo of river boat gamblers
Cries out for the bridge to be painted black
To rid itself of its pink supremacy,
To become what it truly is,
A link between the black and white of America,
To release it from the chains of the river,
To cut it adrift into the ice floes of history
Until it sinks like a paddle wheeler run aground
Abandoning its cargo and passengers on Route 66
While America turns a whiter shade of pale.