Dierberger
Song Lyric Poems and a Free-Verse Piece
“Appomattox”
Well, go and set a watchman
For the hour is at hand.
Oswald has been shot n’
God is out of command.
And my sister is a-comin’
With kindling for tonight,
But my brother mentioned somethin’
About keeping up the fight.
So when those willows cry to you,
And when the slaves all dance,
And when those sparrows fly to you,
Would you give my hand a chance?
We fought in Gettysburg,
Out on the lines.
C’mon, write me darling,
For your chain still binds.
When I left here last April,
I was eighteen and afraid.
When I get back with Shrapnel,
I’ll be thirty and unpaid.
But your sweet memory
Is all that keeps me alive.
Reading Charlotte Bronte
In the parlor where we used to hide.
So if you see the messenger
Please pay him fourfold.
He’ll tell you I shot Dillinger
And all them tales of old.
Burning in the barn,
Four hundred degrees.
“Useless, useless!”
You know what I mean.
Well, spring and surrender are in the air,
Carpetbaggers in my bed.
I can’t find you anywhere
So I wish that I was dead.
But all across antebellum
Comes the sweet smell of life.
I got gold chains, so I’ll sell ‘em
For a brand-new wife.
And my father is out runnin’
Just like I imagine you are
He always called me son n’
It didn’t get him too far.
Well, the flame is hardly keeping,
But the morning, it draws near.
And the watchman is still sleeping
As I scurry out of here.
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“Shiver in Awe”
In time, the old man died and a young one took his place.
And he gave signs and then he cried and laid it all to waste.
So, my dear, don’t you weep; you’ve got secrets left to tell.
I am here, now go to sleep, though only the bad sleep well.
There were rumors and things,
Backstabbers and kings,
That shook my faith, left me slack-jawed.
There were pilgrims and snakes,
All of which makes
Me sit here and shiver in awe.
You say you love me always and forever; do you know what that brings?
Because I seem to remember a carpenter who told me just the same thing.
He came down to sever worldly ties, leaving nothing but his house keys.
So I go from house to house, get nothing but alibis; I still don’t know what he means.
It’s a long and narrow way.
I don’t care what you say.
There is a judgement coming today.
There’s a judgement coming,
Though not from above
(For it’s in each of our hearts, my love!).
Now, I see the lady with the lamp come stepping down through the dark.
She’s an epiphany in the night cold and damp, as you read a chapter from Mark.
She speaks in silence like a woman of old, and I got nothing to do instead,
But through this violence, do as I’m told, as I take her to bed.
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“The Snake Handle”
There’s a handle shaped like a snake
Where I go to church,
On the door leading into the Confession room.
(For the gentiles among you, Confession is a sacrament
Where you tell another man how much you hate yourself.
You should try it sometime.)
Anyways, the handle is made of iron, casked in a beautiful mold,
With his eyes drawn venomous and poised.
I worried about him biting me, still do,
That first time I went in and
Sat in the warm air of the room.
And the little man in the collar and the purple sash
Sat strangely disarming, sitting almost decrepit, much
Like the ancient institution to which he’d bounded himself
For life.
For he was the vicar general in the diocese for about a decade,
He told everyone on the day he left the parish for a new assignment.
He’d seen all the clerical issues: the alcoholics and the gambling addicts
And especially the sexual abusers. There were a lot of them, he told us then.
The number? Whatever you think it is, double it and you’d be close.
They prowled at night, in the dark shadows of the pillars and under the
Sweeping eye of the tabernacle. They moved and slithered
Much like that snake on the door handle.
I didn’t know any of this when I first went in.
I told him about my woman problems, you see.
The thing about woman problems is that you have
Bigger ones when you do have a woman
Than when you don’t, as a Catholic.
At least that’s what it seemed to me.
And I did have a woman. Kind of a new thing.
He asked if I was married
And I said that I wished I was.
Would make the whole thing a whole lot easier, you know?
He nodded like he knew.
And he probably did.
Some nights it all made sense (the following section won’t
Make much sense to those of you who don’t hate yourselves,
So apologies in advance),
Rocking comfortably on my own little Ark,
Walking that tightrope line with some amount of clarity.
Isn’t it in the struggle, after all? Isn’t it just the beauty
Of being that contradiction? To live in the Mystery and
Distant from the Grace, but you can see it, can’t you?
But then there were nights where it was all too much,
And you laughed at how pious you were. And
If that was what was required for forgiveness,
Well, you didn’t want it anyhow.
In the end, He absolved me anyway.
And I left trembling a little.
I knew then that Augustine was right, and I thought,
“How many people today have the problem that I have now?”
“Not many,” came the reply from the Doorhandle Snake and:
“What does that tell you?”
“Oh, but,” I said to him, “I’ll return here, won’t I?”
I think I saw him slither away, if just for a break.
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