On Amen Corner is where they gather, all them midwives who delivered me
Their looks are unwashed, ashamed, and haggard, seeing my hands are empty of offerings.
The took my rolled map, ripped it to tatters, turned their backs and commenced to sing.

I stroke my dark dove, I pat my turtle, but their responce is as cold as charity.
Snapping turtles hide, scrape their teeth against their hide
Doves stumble ’round turned dark from timothy
The midwives turn to saints swinging what’s delivered
On Amen Corner the haggard hammer sings
My snapping turtle it still be snapping, my dark dove can only bark at me
I pull his dark down, rip it to tatters, glue the feathers to my turtles covering.
I will swing it, my soft-hard hammer, to my midwives this is my offering
On Amen Corner, I’ll be delivered, my soft-hard hammer will sing as it swings.

*****

Lyrics to Big Black Bull Comes Like A Caesar

This is what it sounds like when my brother calls me. ~

My parents, they up and passed when I was none than three.
I forced myself onto my brother, made him watch me swell.
When we’d sit round the kitchen table he would whip out his brand new blade.
He’d scratch out words into the wood of the table, I never could tell what they say.
But i could tell they were dirty.
I brought them words on down to the elementary, I pulled them boys behind the elementary wall and I spoke them words hard- yeah I did…

When my brother was a child he was given an animal.
He raised it up to be a big black bull, it never did pitch or sway.
It would ride on the back of our flat bed,.
it looked like one of them greek Caesar’s, and when go to McCintyre’s.
the McCintyre’s got a pen, with a she-cow.
When that she-cow saw his chariot arivin’, She gave the bull her big soft cowy eyes, then she started talkin’
And she was talkin’ dirty…

Then the big black bull come down hard offen the flatbed, forced himself inside the pen with the she-cow. He stood up tall on two legs, like a man does, he swoll himself up hard. Me myself I stood up tall on the flatbed, I pitched when I saw them sway. When that bull he come back down to four legs, my brother forced himself onto the flatbed, he handed me his brand new blade, said ‘scratch out the words on the wood of the flatbed,’
-and I did….

When I was none, I fell out my mamma, I was a breach born son, I come backwards.
And then the calf come, it come, like I come, he come backwards.
And my brother he called the calf my name, and its mother she called the calf my name…