A fallen angel left a mark on my thigh.
And I've had to live like tribesmen and passerines, never outstaying my welcome,
and never welcome for long;
And I traced cursive letters while my people were breaking in two.
Among the four horsemen of Pacific Coast Highway earthquake, brushfire,
mudslide, drought—we upped sticks.
And I flew back and forth across my continent till I had to earn another fare.
And faced Greenwich Mean Time,
And fell into The Barrow, in County Clare, and breathed coal dust over the Vltavá,
And stood on the fault-line of the Jordan, till I became Levantine,
And returned to my continent to labor seven years beside the Mississippi,
a disconnected Jacob in lust with the word.
Each of these waters gave me hardtack no woman could chew without bruising a tongue,
But my strength is from a people who run gauntlets, and my way is hand-to-mouth,
Like my great-grandfather who could only sign his name with an O
Though I have sinned against the dream that carried him across the Atlantic and
made his descendants sit in rows for the cameraman.
And I have sinned in telling a tale mein landsman wouldn't tell,
And I sin again in telling it to you.
