Eliot Schain & Jewel Beth Davis

Almost Heaven - Eliot Schain

The reincarnation of Stevie Nicks is working retail at Nepenthe,
the Big Sur pit stop overlookiing the sea, with mountains rising
like the shoulders of that funny god who keeps pushing us...

and her voice is imprinted with cigarettes and acid, as she counts
the change carefully and hands over the Buddha-inflected gifts with
a cool man, you're outta' sight, after you tell her you'll be traveling
up Route 1 in a van full of ex-Baptists just looking for a good ledge...

so you answer who's playing this rock concert anyway? then
how did that strobe light get inside your hips? and finally can't
we just get down in the guitar-carved grottoes of your brain before
another thirty years of cigarettes for breakfast, my bibles for lunch?

can't we make it happen right here on this Hideaway Cliff...
which could be just the ticket for a Mister Nobody from Nowhere
as he blows into a sweet girl named You, still sixteen in the head
and coasting like the gull suspended out there in those chilly winds?

The Revenge of the Christ Killer, by Jewel Beth Davis
The first time I heard I was a murderer was in Miss Johnson’s class in second grade. It must have been nearing the holidays and Miss Johnson, a, silver-haired, reedy woman who addressed us all as “gels and boys,” was talking about the fact that though Christmas was approaching, not everyone celebrated that most wonderful of all holidays. (more)