I wasn’t made from the rib of a man
I was fashioned from a potent mixture
Of Gun Powder
And the Seeds of Bluebonnets
Bound together with the Sap of Mesquite Trees
I didn’t crack forth from the skull of a god
I was born in an Oyster Shell in Galveston Bay
And adorned with Pearls on my Birthday
I’m the Feral Daughter of the
First Twilight Star and the Bobcat.
The Child of a Blue Norther
That picked up the Red Dirt and carried
It to the rich
Soil south
If we were crows they’d call us a murder
And you can be sure that’s what there’ll be.
As soon as we find that man Thomas Gentry.
And we meet up with him in West Tennessee.
Beth was our sister.
It was her, plus us three.
She was the prettiest and the youngest amongst us,
And Gentry took her off to West Tennessee.
Rock Bottom Cathedral, where the suffering go.
Rock Bottom Cathedral, what brought you so low?
We don’t spend no time setting you right.
We welcome your lost soul in from the night.
Rock Bottom Cathedral, God’s own lost and found.
If you weren’t lost before, well you surely are now.
Nobody is looking, here’s where you’ll stay.
New misfits and losers are welcomed each day.
Snakes and bones and musical thrones.
Wife’s long gone. The son won’t come home.
Here you stand, king of the hill.
Miserable and angry, a bitter pill.
You set it afire to watch it all burn,
Now all you can do is sit and yearn
For the things you had fore you run them away.
A love, a child, and friends that would stay.
The old house has fallen.
I don’t know what part gave in
Or gave up
First.
Or if every last beam and joist
Just saw it coming
And gave up the ghost
All at once.
Why, aren’t you a haughty bitch
In a nasty mood?
Slinging words like razor blades,
Tearing down simple beauty
Because you have failed,
In your desire for a life free of effort.
Creativity lives in the fragile.
A place where your skin is thin
And your armor is weakened
And you are as easily brought to rage as tears.
Music is ecstasy and becomes your heartbeat.
I remember dreams I had lifetimes ago.
I was standing at the edge of a cliff,
Clouds above, and below.
A towering leaf filled oak
Standing beside me on the precipice,
Roots bare and exposed but never falling.
We looked out over the clouds.
No bottom in sight.
Stand your ground,
Or fly.
But there is no fall.
There is no pull down,
No gravity.
No fear.
Just a wonderful view,
And a mind that has no footing at all.