the saint

the saint

i had me some limber limber legs that felt a whole lot of nothin
not even the thumping pumping of the church legs stamping all around them church psalms
it was Saturday night and they belted hallelujah hallelujah they shouted and rose like big old claps of thunder
and up to their feet all of em alight with the glow of god
brilliant they were brilliant and beckoning but i stayed lame and still
steady but for the big beats of my heart
rising and falling like them, like them cheers
the room rocked with sweat and celebration
yellow lamps were just swinging from electric wires
filling each soul with neon light and the lord

(and their praise rose higher and higher to rhyme and match the glory of the martyr)

she had been oh my so tired sunk to a chair palms low
skin shining and rippling with each sin she drank up from us
and she swallowed and made em her own
took for the keeping for her assumption
took em from us, us sinners
I couldn't stop starin at those faces our hallelujah faces
the open mouths the bowed lips the eyes like open windows
hallelujah hallelujah they sang
and she cured another
and the man who once was blind now could see

(sometimes she would collapse from swallowing too many
sometimes she would puke from being too full of us)

lifted lifted my frame found the shape of two shoulders
and oh my I was lifted and brought to the martyr I was
ready to take it right outta me my birthed sin and my useless legs
the voices raised and rocked breathed and moved like a flock of birds
and yes yes yes they made spaces in the church in oh sounds
bliss moved face to heart to hands to eyes

all but hers oh yes all but hers no bliss there
her shape was that of a question bent and stooped
rising at the end
her breath did not come out glory glory it came out hard brittle
and the sins in her eyes
the diseases she'd up and taken from us
oh lord the way she aged

and before she could heal me I bit the man who was carrying me
and I bit him hard, I did
and when he looked at me all surprised I go
man I gotta go pee
and he took me away from the woman
cause I couldn't bear to see her face
once she felt my sins