She Was Humming

She was humming.

In the choir, of a savior that would be her

Escape.

From whiskey stained words of a father-

Suppose to love her

Saying she wasn’t good enough, to love.

And hollow eyes of a Hollywood wife-

Pretending she wasn’t a mother.

 

Still she sang of God’s intention

And claimed he’d be her salvation

She was an angel in the demon’s choir

Hymns of heaven filled me with hell’s desire

 

I was her foul-mouthed temptation.

The forbidden fruit that hung on her tree.

Still she plucked me as if to save me.

She was my rapture -

Sent to set me free

And those jukebox hymns that cost a nickel to some,

Meant the world to me.

They spoke glory and peace.

Things my suicide veins,

and bloodstained mind -

knew as fantasy in a world defined.

 

We were as sacred as the man who hung from her neck.

As holy as books read from each Sunday.

And as hopeful as the spirituals that parted her lips.

 

She told me just because I was out of oil -

Did not mean my fire couldn’t be lit.

And she had a match inside -

That would make me burn for seven nights,

Until gasoline lit my veins to make me burn forever.

 

But that light never came on, only flickered.

And flickers only last a day – maybe two

And sometimes she’d start humming and I’d tell her to

Stop

I’d tell her to be

Quiet – To Shut the Fuck Up!

 

Before she could speak, I’d have her against the wall.

I was the Goliath to her David.

No stones she spoke of could knock me down.

That’s when she’d pray for my redemption,

and hum a hymn of God’s intention.

My fists became her stones retaliation,

Pent on knocking out her salvation.

 

I stared into her black eyes of Bethlehem

that made me wonder why we weren’t home yet,

because we’d been following the North Start for so long,

We passed a billboard that says “Jesus Saves”

But could Jesus really save me?

After I had drug her down into the depths of hell,

Nailing her hands to mine.

Stifling out her harmonies.

Just so she could be by my side?

 

Her sighs a flair warning of her own demise

still she hummed to past the time,

a battleground hymn of a war she still was in.

tunes of fallen angels and lost redemption

 

Her hums engulfed by sobs

Hymns begging for salvation -

Dimmed

A dove shot with best intention.