I was raised on a road bent toward a ruin,

in a snake handler’s strange, unraveling breath

and the ashen rows of clergymen—

an oracle, a fool, a ghost of death.

I prayed before I touched myself, as though

one errant thought might tilt the kingdom’s frame;

each Wednesday hauled my records down below,

afraid that Hendrix backward stirred some name

that dust remembers—Baal, something kin,

a faceless thing that rose because it could,

that slouched from Kansas fields and prairie winds,

knee-deep in human excrement and blood.

The Whore of Babylon opines:

is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?