Rock and Roll

King David strumming the gut strings, gutting
the silence of the temple dust and air,
improvises on his instrument,
looking for the riff, the new tune,
and outside a literal storm flashing,
falling toward and on Jerusalem.
The steady drumming of his heart
and right foot rock along, harmonic,
bass lines thundering substance under all.

What’s the matter? Always only a step
between a doorway and death. Dodging a spear
of near silence, the trouble with bears and lions,
so many enemies of even the thought of God.
A trickling brook of smoothest stones,
the inordinate bones of Giants,
and still and low, the loneliness of fields
and sheep. At some point everyone’s got
a good friend dead and a clock to talk to.

More than some symbolic robe, hood
pulled over his head like a cave where he can hide,
David looks in the dark for that kingdom chord,
the name of an angel thick as a hand in honey
coming from the heights to touch his tongue.
He conjures up a rhythm to change the light
in a room where women might swoon,
and men would bend their boredom to a leap
of faith in air like hunger personified.
And with the marble thunder dissipating
here, he’s humble again among the petrichor,
the smell of wet wolves in the corridors
and invisible snakes of the rain unsettled
now settling with the storm already past,
a clear shining coming on through firelight.
He’s looking. He’s looking for a line.

Deliver my darling from the power of the dog.


John Poch’s most recent book is Texases (WordFarm, 2019). His poems appear widely in magazines such as the Paris Review, Poetry, the Sewanee Review, and The Nation. He teaches in the creative-writing program at Texas Tech University.