Gospel

God didn’t say shit
until he knew all that spit
and sawdust was going to hold up.
But what he said there was, so
there was sound
before light and sight
and black and white.

Just at the fork of the fifties
lightning struck on fertile ground,
splitting the narrative,
a gyrating dream out of the dream,
of the gutter, twisting
out of the guts of America,
self-delivered royalty of hillbilly soil,
all hail:
king of the rednecks.

We heard the news
before we saw it:
there would be good rocking tonight,
and indeed it came to El Paso.

They pinned the sin on him
-the first firework
before the pyrotechnical sky
we’ve lived under since-
gasping in their bobby-sox
and flattops, grasping
at the subtext, this was the best
thing America had to offer
wasn’t it? Better than
the hula-hoop, Frank Sinatra..

oh the nostalgia, the dream;
he was fluttering, pristine
-before the flares, the amphetamines,
and the effect, a rippling rhythm
that would build, seismically
shake, rattle the walls of the city..

the rise and then
the splendorous demise;
the dream: duplicated
the myth: inflated
the man: medicated
Eden’s blue suede skies
mushroom clouded,

and so from green to gold,
a cabaret crucifixion,
and Memphis sank to grief
for all women, men
same old blues;
new Jerusalem.