Faith in Resentment

He told him he had to go, needed to make some money for the ride back. The organist handed him a ten & said melodies have rarely come to me because in the end I resent music, foolishly hold it accountable for all my carelessness & strayed desires which have always led me against the wall, my hands behind my back, waiting for a reprieve. He put the money in his pocket & said thanks for it & the beer. He passed through the park & could see the scars in the trees shining in the lamplight. At the entrance of Warschauer station, he bought some sausage from a fat pimpled man in a wheelchair who rocked back & forth. He slid it in a bun & passed it over the plastic roof which housed the steaming scraps, eyes hid behind sunglasses, beats heard from the headphones around his cleft head. After washing the food down with another beer, he took out his guitar & harmonica & sung "I Fought the Law," even though he never had, the law tends to leave you alone when you've only ever been a threat to yourself. The organist felt his playing was premised on bad faith for the god he was paid to serve, the house he was hired to awaken. Has he failed to serve those bruised & strung-out highwayman, the blind bluesmen in movie lots, cast-out pastors who prophesized in song, voodoo priests & convict seers with all that he grumbled & cursed on busy paths? Twilight & what to offer but this drunk homage. But he knew he wasn't worthy to pay such homage. Too enslaved by fear whereas the others, those for whom he sang, whose songs he whimpered, would risk their soul for a bus ticket to Biloxi.