The Great Flood (An Homage to Rhythm and Blues)

The Great Flood
Thunder tiptoes up my trembling spine,
intertwining vertebrae, slithering and serpentine,
entering the hollow of my throat.
It makes a great leap forward and manages to escape
through gaps in my clenched teeth,
filling the room with electric vibrato.
I vacillate on unsteady feet as it passes from me
and all of the hair on my body stands erect,
zigzagged, charged, quieting my intellect.
My brain ceases function, I’m at a junction
where my body and my breath join the great energy of the primal sound.
What pours from me in the stream of one long breath
is that which I absorbed through my pores,
and through the great tremor on the floor of the thundering blues.
It was the electrocution by the amplifier cord
that danced across the Muddy Waters and sent the flickering flames
deep into the heart of me, igniting the inner parts of me
with a fire that will refuse to die.
This is an emotional commotion, like a spiritual revival,
where there is no bible and no steeple,
but people quaking and people shaking,
arriving at the Crossroads and falling down on their knees
as the same fire joins the current of their blood.
There is a great flood and two by two the wave takes its victims,
jolting, jarring, and electrifying them,
bolting, sparring, offending and amending them;
it hits them like a runaway train, stun-gunning their brains,
severing the line with the Ball and Chain.
Acoustic feedback reverberates in our souls,
the sweet blues music just rolls and rolls.
We lay flat, dispatched in its path,
emaciated, satiated, and saturated by the great flood.