Every Pain

He fills the flower vases, trims the candle bases, takes small change from the poor box.

Tyler has the key.

He takes nail and hammer to tack up the banner of felt scraps glued together reading,

"Jesus Lives In Me."

Alone in the night he mocks the words of the preacher: "God is feeling your every pain."

Repair the Christmas stable, restore the plaster angel.

Her lips begin to crumble and her robes begin to peel.

For Bible study in the church basement, hear children Gospel citing, Matthew 17:15.

Alone in the night he mocks the arms of the preacher raised to the ceiling,

"Tell God your pain."

To him the world's defiled.

In Lot he sees a likeness there;

he swears this Sodom will burn down.

Near Sacred Blood there's a dance hall where Tyler Glen saw a black girl and a white boy kissing shamelessly.

Black hands on white shoulders, white hands on black shoulders, dancing, and you know what's more.

He's God's mad disciple, a righteous title, for the Word he heard he so misunderstood.

Though simple minded, a crippled man, to know this man is to fear this man, to shake when he comes.

Wasn't it God that let Puritans in Salem do what they did to the unfaithful?

Boys at the Jubilee slowly sink into brown bag whiskey drinking and reeling on their feet.

Girls at the Jubilee in low-cut dresses yield to the caresses and the man-handling.

Black hands on white shoulders, white hands on black shoulders, dancing, and you know what's more.

Through the tall blades of grass he heads for the Jubilee with a bucket in his right hand full of rags soaked in gasoline.

He lifts the shingles in the dark and slips the rags there underneath.

He strikes a matchstick on the box side and watches the rags ignite.

He climbs the bell tower of the Sacred Blood to watch the flames rising higher toward the trees.

Sirens wailing now toward the scene.