From On High
Eric Michael Schultz
[eschultz@rohan.sdsu.edu]
You may dream
of smiling winged cherubs
flowers and arrows and little bare bottoms
but angels are cruel
Angels
shoot up with angel dust
drive pickup trucks with shotgun racks
and NRA bumper stickers
Angels shake their bloodstained wings
Force us to speak in tongues
By stopping our lungs
Angels burn our icons
stomp on our ideas
The problem with you
is you want life to be beautiful
soft and sweet
and art just ain't like that
Sipping your decafe lattes
discussing Fellini
on the patio at Starbucks, (the Macdonald's of coffee)
in front of your Mercedes
My soul drives a Volvo
Eats ramen noodles with instant coffee
Burned bare by the rays of the moon
Marauding angels hovered over my crib
Sewed shut my mouth and pried open my eyes
So that my fingers
Could sing their praises
Angels are iconoclasts,
ordeals in our lives that force us to see the truth
Angels torture us at night
Stick us with fiery pokers in day
Kill loved ones and torture ideals
I grind rhyme with a toothbrush
torture meter, shred sense
I eat poets like you
for breakfast
I'll take a perfectly good sentence
and run it over with my Volvo
Hit and run poetry
Like an angel I'm
Plunging your toilets
for my dirt
banging on your walls
to keep you screaming
Sewer slugdin
Gut punching
Whiskey drinkin'
Fun
Angelic light
Cuts like a knife
Through delusions and grandeur
We're all the same down here
Angels ride the heavens in purity
and humility
for their toil is holy but hard
Angels
force us to see the truth
© 1998 Eric Michael Schultz, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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