Jack D. Harvey

That Crazy Assassin

Jerry Lee bopped off,
they say,
two wives, Lewis and Lois,
unbidden angels,
they lost their way,
they say,
suffering faces upturned
to unmerciful heaven;
they were his babes,
lost in the woods, maybe,
for a long day and a night.
In death,
in the waning moon,
their color the color of
pool tiles,
color of cream, their flesh
holy lamb’s blood 
overspread,
drove him to be 
done with them.

Hear his left hand still
thundering in the dark;
balls of fire
in the lonesome night,
feet of iron
jumping down the hills,
shaking down the country roofs.
The personal friend of Satan,
nothing loath,
leans towards the deep,
his weight a feather 
in the balance;
his song 
atonement for
those fretted murdered souls.
Death, the taker, takes;
Whiteboy’s innards,
shaking his shoes,
move with pity;
his mother, the giver,
is nowhere, everywhere;    
gentle earth to earth.
               
At the gravesite
the sermon slow,
the singing weary;
the women
one by one file off,
no strangers to the slaughter.
Again and again,
Agamemnon’s daughter
bleeds on the altar;
grief
by the windless shore
that would bring
tears to the eyes 
of an army.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.