Dean McClain Remembers

Shotgun Full of Jesus
(for Hunter S. Thompson)

So there ya are
at the old oaken bar
tryin’ to cold beer the road dust
out of soundproof ears
when a whiskied stranger
reaches for his Revolver

album and snarls,

“I’LL BET YOU CAN DANCE NOW CITY-SLICKER!

WELL?”

An’ I says to him,

“BETTER BACK OFF THERE STRANGER, CAUSE,

I got a shotgun full of Jesus
I got a barrel emptied of tortured rain
I got a peace brain blowing to pieces
I got heart full of love
I got soul full of rage
I got a shoebox full of jumpy religions
I got alchemy nation nuclear decisions
I got lingering ancestral kisses waiting overseas
I got stepped on fingers downstairs

I got elevators beyond the clouds
I got loud funky tennis shoe halos
I got grizzly bear incantation Indian blanket
I got agent-orange defoliated consciousness
I got demonstration fire feet
I got carnival arcade target for the army
I got nose wallet jackass stench
I got red wine mindful mutilating minefield
I got untreatable clinical compression

I got potentially fatal flawless memory echo
I got bloody bridges dripping into the past
I got conduits of influence from all sides
I got libraries full of censored patriots
I got crimson apathy waving in the dawn’s early light
I got fire-dripping overload at dusk

I got midnight feline curiosity
I got fenced-in junkyard canine snarl
I got public enemy vigilance eyesight
I got singular scattershot obsession
I got terminally itchy trigger finger

YES

I got a shotgun full of Jesus”

***

Are you victim
Are you malady
Is your perception
grounded in reality
are there no questions
for your answer
are you defending
religions cancer?
Who is the victim
Who is your victim
I’ll trade questions
for information
leading to cathartic sensation
I have shotgun
full of Jesus
itchy finger for salvation
for the nation
for your nation
and its scattershot
naïve obsessions
Don’t be the stranger
duped down the barrel
of your country’s
lathered-up
pre-emptive sanitation
axis of evil
justification

with a shotgun
full of jesus