Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Conflagration (for Cee-Mo)

Hell’s Angels soared down my block. As the train poured out and the bars filled up they pirouetted the asphalt and made figure eights from the run-off.  I was gone the day our holy oak trusses soaked up cooking oil like tampons and flashed into charcoal in a velvet tornado, but I bet those angels danced.

I bet they cut the rug until it burned instead of boiled and their wings repelled the pulse of blackened air. I bet they twirled.

I came home to the skeleton and mourned a hundred little gardens made from windows seen through ancient bones that outlived quakes and riots. And as I dropped my exiled life their chorus bulldozed through my chest.  In mufflers and backfires; I heard the Angels sing.

I bet they made an altar at the Dogpatch out of glasses. And their motors joined the engines in a turbine screech of savior and redemption and I bet the Angels sang.

I saw them sway and stumble from my untouched bayview window meeting eyes and nodding slowly at what the T-line would bring. The gentry marched in store fronts,  blocks, then streets and I was gone before the Angels. But I stumbled down that block for old times sake and saw their treads; and I bet those angels danced.

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