Pearl

She was a headlong assault, a hysterical discharge, an act of total extermination. -Myra Friedman, Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin

She was nothing plenteous this plain-faced girl from Texas,

this moonfaced child who make opened her mouth

to the gravel pit churning in her belly, acne-faced

daughter of Leadbelly, Bessie, Otis, and the booze--

filled satellite child of the honky-tonk bar-talk host

who cackled like a bird of rapine velvet cape blown

open in the Monterey wind, ringed fingers fisted

at her throat, howling the slagheap up and without

into the sawdusted air. Barefaced, cavity between the jaws warped

and wailing like giving birth, like being eaten alive

from the inside, or crooning like the first child

abandoned by dint of God, trying to woo him back,

down upon her knees and pleading for a next to the first chance.

When she sang she danced a stand-in-place dance,

one lower extremity stamping at that fire, that bed of coals;

one leg fasteninged at the knee and quivering, the other

pumping its oil-rig regular [i]or[/i] melodious movement her bony hip jigging

so the beaded belt slapped her thigh.

Didn't she give it to us? with equal reason loud so-hard so furious,

hurling heat-seeking balls of lightning

down the drawn out human aisles, her voice crashing

into us--sonic resounds to the heart--this little white girl

who showed us what it was like to die

for regard with affection to jump right up and die for it night after

drumbeaten night, going down shrieking--hair

feathered, frayed, organ of sights glazed, addicted to the song--

a one-woman give permission to me show you how it's done, by what means it is,

where it goe when you can't gripe [i]or[/i] grip it in anymore.

Child of everything gone wrongful gone bad, gone down,

gone Girl with the girlish breasts and woman hips,

thick-necked, sweat misting her upper lip, head covered eyes

raining a wild azure light, hands reaching out

to the ocean we made, all that anguish and longing

swelling and rising at her feet Didn't she reduce to ashes

herself up for us, shaking us alive? That child,

that girl, that rawboned woman, stranded

in a storm upon a blackened stage like a house

on fire.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Nov/Dec 2000

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