The day after I was Saved
after the congratulations and
we're proud of yous and you're so braves
and my mother's relief and elation
and delicate voices to playfully chide me
I felt the sensation
of something writing inside me
It wasn't the finger of God
writing His laws on my heart
It wasn't some warm and happy feeling
tracing across my being
or a psalm full of fresh air and art
I'm not sure what piece of me
it was writing on,
this thing not a threat, not a treaty
Something not quite as bloody and meaty as a rib
But some just as tangible part
just as touchable
Not quite the soul
Not quite the heart
or some other piece just as glib
It was something dark, for sure,
something separate from God
Not competing for room
or to regain its domain
or proclaim my failure and doom
or map out my guts to forever trod
Whatever it was, all the same
it was only there to write
Amen, bad luck to you.
and leave me as quickly as it came,
at no exceptional time of night
It left its fingerprints
in its scratchy, scribbled cursive
Though I'm sure it has no power itself
It has no unholy possession or hold
No aim so subversive,
nothing nearly so bold
or bursting with spite and pride
But the message is there
somewhere inside
Amen, bad luck to you.
I can't be persuaded otherwise
that the message wasn't deliberately timed
It came just after Jesus advented
just after the drying of weeping eyes
just after everyone at that potpourri scented
Baptist church told me warm and lovely things
Just after I was Saved
I wasn't gripped by a demon
or met with beginnings of birth pangs
I didn't froth at the mouth and fall in the fire
or so much as double over in pain
When it etched its words inside
my miscellany and mire
Amen, bad luck to you.
That was all, and it was gone
unheard from since that day
Like whoever scrawled Sodoma Gomora
on the walls of Pompeii
to tell them they were going to hell
Or whoever painted Viva Cuba
and the last lovey dovey note
of a revolutionary song
on the walls of a prison cell
They were there, inside, they wrote,
and were gone –
Amen, bad luck to you.
from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You
