demon blues

cannot be sung.                     not really. 
A human voice can’t make the sounds:
                  the hissing of a small town god in tin foil,
                  bottles breaking in a parking lot, 
                  Johnny’s beater car,             its screeching tires.
The wife-beater with the cigarette holes. 
                                    The torn jeans stained with paint. 
                  His arms tattooed with roses            blooming:
Johnny, looking like the hustler Christ
                  when he picked me up
                                    and swung me in a circle,                  laughing. 
                  How he took my hand and pressed it to his smooth face,
                                    clean-shaven                          after a year in prison.  
                                    How I thought,                      
                                                                        huh. maybe tonight.

Maybe                      is a kind of witchcraft;
                  anyone who loves an addict knows its practice.
                                    But that night in Richmond to my eyes
                  we were brothers,                sailors,  
                                    hard-drinking and brave.
                                    Our legs were muscling for space in the wooden booth
                  of a dive bar and I spent 20 dollars on the jukebox, 
                                    and I was proud
                                                      to keep rough company,
                  to be wasted in public,  to not have a plan
                                    or a place to stay.   

I went to take a piss
                  while he called up old friends on my phone.
I drew our names in sharpie on the wall. 
                  No heart, no arrow, just                       our names. 
                                    Later, we stumbled 8 blocks
                                    to somebody’s house— 
                                                      a girl he used to date. 
                  I laid out on the couch and listened
while they fucked in the next room,               for hours.

Night-table lamp knocked over,      smashed,
                  the bedframe smack, his whimpering,

a record I could play           and play,
                                    and always get a kick,
but you can’t dial that on any radio that I’ve found. 
                  Not really.

I wish I could explain.       His voice. 
                  It sounded like a brick kissing the statue’s face. 
                                    Anvils
                                                      falling. 
                                    The hammer’s one-note song. 
It sounded just like everyday disaster. 
Just like I imagined that it would                     with me. 

BY SEAN PATRICK MULROY

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Born and raised in Southern Virginia, Sean Patrick Mulroy grew up in a house that was built in 1801 and was commandeered by the Union Army during the Civil War to serve as a makeshift hospital. As a boy, Sean loved to peel back the carpets to show where the blood from hasty surgeries on wounded soldiers had stained the wooden floorboards. Now he writes poems. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Bakery, Assaracus, Rua de Baixo, Network Awesome, Moonshot, Side B, Union Station, Tandem, Frigg, Neon, Best Indie Literature of New England,  Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, and Ganymede.  http://www.thevanishingman.com