House of Cards
To live in card houses
y’all gotta get used to the strong taste
of pepper
and powder
and
…and that strange smell ya get
when ya squeeze a big amber drop
o’pine dew ‘tween your fingers
‘til it bleeds a sunset over the prints.
All sticky and lookin’
like a sigh…
It / reeks of / Why.
Oh, the sound? That’s the bees,
livin’ and workin’
sometimes dyin’ for the honey
pot on the breakfast bar
- all made of clubs and spades.
They ain’t got nowhere else to go,
So…
when they comes knockin’ for sugar,
don’t give ‘em the
brush off with
old sweet’n’lows.
Y’all can sit and stare at these -
these paper walls,
all bendin’ with the elements,
some yellered with years
of fondlin’ in backhand poker
games and such.
Ya stare and see hearts.
See clubs.
See the dull dots of marks ‘gainst
the shine of the diamonds
as they glint-shine off the rich folks‘
rings and earrings and
and tie-pins!
\ \ But / /
all the faces and the aces
are turned out and away
and they sure as hell don’t…
they sure as hell don’t look
at You
as You’re tryin’ make out
ya don’t see them.
[Make out yew don’t give a damn.
It’d be a pretty lie, if ya could
make it stick]
y’all gotta stop sittin’ by
while that strong taste of
pepper
and powder
and rags soaked in
from a world without bees,
comes in at ya.
All that… all that not-knowin’ folks
and not-knowin’ when to keep
that big bazoo shut and trapped
and Kept Quiet.
“Hell boy, you’s just a Spade,
so you ain’t got no right to go
makin’ eyes at your new
sweet-Heart.”
They’ll soon learn.
Leads to bell-fights.
Or silence.
Or unwanted
flickerin’ lights.
And when you is livin’ in a house of cards,
You don’t need no extra buzzin’.
Those card walls are steady held,
no swayin’,
no need to be prayin’ for God
to suck back in that wicked breeze.
But The Smoke seeps through
and it calms.
It calms them,
It – the smoke- it calms the bees and
the bees are calmed by the smoke and…
And they’re all crawlin’, not flyin’,
Big mass of black and yeller.
They’re all crawlin’ as they – as they start dyin’,
Big Mess of black and yeller bodies,
heaped in smoke and ash and flames.
It reeks of \\Why ///
The white painted faces are starin’ outwards
And lookin’ away
Lookin’ away from all that death…
the death of
All those poor, poor blackened
Reeks
Of
…
