The
Pentecostal
Elevator's stuck. You jab buttons
but the doors stay shut.
"Goddamit!" you
say.
I wince, wet my lips
with the question.
"Have you been saved?"
But I save it. Got to find a way
to work it in.
Like a specialist
waiting for the chance
to broach rare b-sides
or the anatomy of aphids.
The wetting of the lips,
the cough, like gearing for a dive
only to break my spine
on the bottom of watch-checking,
toe-tapping boredom.
But once I start talking, can't stop,
anymore than I could rewind
in midair.
There's so much I want to tell you.
Like that poor blessed soul
who wants to share
the tiny universe he sees
in the body of a bug.
I want to tell you
about glossolalia
and the day God's gun
shot me through the heart
but I didn't die.
When I was seven
and heard my daddy say
glossolalia I thought
of great big flowers
unfurling, hands opening
to heaven. Later he explained.
Glossolalia was when the holy ghost
came into a man's mouth
and danced on his tongue.
I want to tell you about the day,
the day, the glorious day
when the spirit blessed me
with a tango, a waltz,
a cha cha, a samba,
a roof raising fox trot!
I want you to understand
what it felt like
when I was baptized in the spirit,
when I could walk up walls
and suspend from ceilings
and my soul wasn't cargo
in a dark hold
but one with the red clay
of creation.
But I don't have words.
I wish we could talk in colors
and shapes and what we saw
in an apple's skin was the same.
When I spoke in tongues
that day, that day,
that glorious day
I was the eternal apple one
and same through time
essence of cloud
immutable water vapor
indisputable beating heart!
The whole world
was a drum circle
in agreement.
"Have you been saved?"
There. I've asked it.
And now I see
judgment come down
hard behind your eyes.
"Don't preach to me," you say.
"We all need the Christ love," I say.
"We all have different ways to pray," you
say.
I wish that what we thought of
when we thought the color blue was the same.
"Just five minutes," I say.
"Fuck off," you say,
and press the emergency button ten times.
Listen, I want to say,
do you think I pleasure myself this way?
Every soul I see is another one slipped
to hell. Not just the hell we go to
when we die but a hell
of seconds unspoken, unshared,
of half-words choking on their way
up throats. Of souls that never know
the red clay of creation, forever cargo
in a dark hold. Caught in particulars
of pear and plum and pink,
praying in their different ways.
Every car that passes
is one I should be chasing.
Every telemarketer that calls
is a soul I should be saving.
Every cynic, every skeptic,
every hand pulls at me
at night in bed till I can't sleep or breathe,
my sheets become the River Styx,
I drown.
Listen for just a second
while the doors are still stuck.
I am gasping in this elevator
for the love of you
while you press buttons.
Noone except Jesus
not even your mother
has ever loved you this much.
Stockholm Syndrome
I was not treated cruelly.
This may be difficult for
you to understand:
the kindness of a glass of water
or a crust of bread,
the way a blindfold heightens the senses,
brings intimacy with the texture of a fingertip
or the rasp of approaching steps, marrying you
like a bridal veil.
I don't mean to call my
captors good men.
They were capable of evil,
and they were boys.
When they let me see, I
wanted to cry
not for my impending death
but for their dirt-faced ruddiness.
One of them had been trying
to grow a beard
for months and couldn't; he had nothing
but wisps on his thin chin.
You want me to say they were
monsters
because it would be simpler
to shudder at other people's savagery
on the 7 o'clock news. I'd rather tell them
how the wispy chinned boy used to talk to me
when the others weren't watching,
