Martin Jack

this town is wrong
 

in its slant way
streets speak bent
 
out of shape
a shorthand for crimes
 
and misdemeanors that only
discerners read, sensitive
 
to hotspots where the past
seeps through volcanic
 
written into the landscape
of names where evil grins
 
its face paint briefly
before melting in the light
 

Out of your Hand
 

mine is empty
cracked fingers stretch
 
out for promises
that overflow your wells,
 
named for posterity
when you chose deserts
 
in covenant, for dryness
to become laughter
 
and strongholds that grind
to become dust
 
you trample in victory
until I see and rejoice
 
over your welcoming shadow
all I need to drink
 

Martin Jack © 2009

A Front

garlands consecrated in terror
fashioned its godhead out of virtue
 
Robespierre's coronation at the Festival
of the Supreme Being
 
repeats itself with every new
salute from the tennis court
 
towards some fresh revolutionary flag,
its rouge bordering on misanthropy
 
as its stripes made themselves
a front felt on the back of history
 
engineering their lordship cult
through the ballot box
 
of mass graves, to the tune
of thunderous applause

The Lighthouse

set on a rock
Christ sweeps the bay
for lost ships draped in mist

our tears stained their deck
but his light called us homeward
warm arms flocking

around our wincing hulls
dry and brittle to the touch
airbrushed where the surgical cut was made

he broke the mist
clothed us in ribbon
the crimson of his righteousness

swinging from a lighthouse
at the right side of Father's
storehouse of grace

pulling us from the hull-crushing
rocks which drown men
in static

our fragile stations
gifted an economy ticket
to glory, which cost us less

than a dime but cost
him an empty patch of flesh
the nails anchored for our rescue

Martin Jack © 2009