THE DEVIL LIVES IN RICHMOND

The sun always cracks over the same spindly tree;

old druggies in their makeshift worlds; roof sacrifices

to Tonatiuh and the coming dawn; from fire escape

ziggurats his followers would hunt for the best way

to carve your heart so that it never skips a beat.

-

Unused clothes-lines make interesting rope; to hang a

man by the arms, "What's wrong with me, I sold it cheap

... can't we all just be happy?"

It takes a lot of bleach to turn the sheets innocent again.

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Lust on the rocks when the darkness falls;

two lovers who won't remember the only affair they'll

ever have amidst a grotto of chuckling friends and

splintered glass.

-

The old man whose name forgot itself opened a corner-

stand selling bouquets;

there was talk of Mister Forget-Me-Not dropping into

the maw of the river, he's coughing, wheezing; eventually

drowning. Something disgusting muffled his cries. His

life was quickly forgotten.

-

On pedestals of apple crates, bathing in the 7-11 doctrine,

the devil's children slurped cherry and blue blast,

disregarding the angels chiming, "your change, man;

a dollar-twenty for your soul."

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Poe wrote graveyard tangoes and the kids in black kept

rhythm free, standing on their tippy-toes underneath

the full moon, down by the riverside with Annabel Lee

skipping rocks over the faces of everyone who had died.

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Meandering down Monument Avenue, breath making wisps of

ice-dust on the breeze; every ghastly eye on you and your

pink and purple spray cans, built to make Washington dance

with the Union through a battlefield of concrete and cigarette butts.

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She combed her potatoes with fake nails that smelled of sex

and drew red faces in the gravy; they all laughed hesitant and appalled,

she's wishing she could turn back time, and the city to

be less appealing; her mother is calling, the Bible's beaten

her brains to mashed potatoes.

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The church and the steeple and all'it's merry people were built

next to the gentleman's club on Midlothian, late at night

God amused by his own creations; "dance one more, I have

another twenty somewhere," they're on the altar, singing praises

to the Lord who provided them with hopeless destinies.

-

That girl is twelve, she's already been through hell; seen the fire and

bathed a while in a sense of false innocence. There was an acre

beyond these chaotic walls where she'd sacrifice her hands to a

God she saw in a dream; God lives in a dream.

God is a four-headed seven-armed purple hippopotamus with

one eye and a bag of sweets.

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The police are the criminals, and the thugs are your refuge; find peace

with revolution. When you see the men in blue with their black

sticks in revolt, you better bolt for hope to see a better way,

celebrate Independence Day with the same bastards who broke

your skull on your birthday last year.

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So, she took the shovel for you and returned you to His black dirt

perhaps she could find your eyes as circles in the dust,

your heart in a city of maggots, and o' how it would beat!

every man in a noose was you. In twilight, when the moon is

bright she will find you once more, and waltz like lovers through the

bleak winter's night.