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.