Mercy Merci

Mercy Merci

When they come for me, I will be gone
Risen to the call of a distant trumpet
carrying my name on a jazz melody
The sound I’ve waited for
It seems as though I’ve listened in slow motion
and suddenly injected with the strength of my own notions
of what I ought to be
I rose from the ashes

I am coffined yet alive and shaking
like the waking buffalo from a trance
facing down death at the slaughterhouse
My body, tattooed by the flat iron cloven hoofs of hatred
for my kind

Ancestral ghosts whisper, voices thunder through low slung
southland trees injecting Spirit

I heard the sound pure and sweet saying,
broken but you will rise
and I danced like a marionette posessed
with blood of the living

Spreading wings
clipped
but strong enough
I couldn’t see the dreams for the hatred of a hundred eyes
casting nets that bound me
looking through me but blind

Somewhere like phantasms of hope and mercy
memories clung to me
wouldn’t let go of me
baptized and filled me
Until I sang like a bird with the holy ghost
Full of myself
4/27/09