Jezebel

They all knelt before you-
O Holy Queen, O righteous reign.
To the cloth that wrapped
your mottled feet,
Teach us, teach us,
they said. Take our sandy morals
and make them mud,
And then we'll pray
together.

Deliver us, daughter of Ethbaal,
show us how to sell our masks to the gods
where cedars line the road,
how to sing Ahab's songs to
the tarnished noblemen of the tap-house
where you taunted them with your dance
til the sun rose into a
sharp, black sky.

But where is God? Where is God?
Is he blind that he cannot see
just as Ahab could not, just as you could not,
Temptress of Jezreel.
Does he not have eyes left for the
dirt that clothes the naked land,
the naked backs and blind Samsons
crawling over the parched cracks
of your forsaken earth?

Who will save us now, O Jezebel?
Bring down your shrines of sculpted plaster
so if the Heavens close the filthy gates to
the lepers again
we can die together,
all wrapped in Sodom's rubies,
our bodies painted with
Gemorrah's molten silver.