REVELATION OF PAUL (REVISITED)
At nine, Paul had to excuse himself from class,
everyone laughed, vomit in his seat,
his pores began to secrete a dark oil,
with the smell of spoiled meat.
At only eight, his body began to shake.
His back trembled. The shudder was terrifying.
Non-clarifying. His parents took him to doctors,
physicians, experts in their craft . . . everyone laughed.
The shaking would stop for months and then begin without warning.
Paul’s father prayed at his bedside. A hopelessness to confide,
Answers denied. A strength to his son he couldn’t provide.
At eleven, it’s been eight months without a shiver or shake,
things were fine when awake, but as he slept those long nights,
an endless fight, visions at dizzying heights.
Horsemen ablaze with weapons made from human bones,
riding on a cloud of hollow moans, an empty throne.
Red soulless eyes, distant cries, supplies for a hunter who
has become the hunted. Sought by the four in young dreams.
Woke with a scream. Paul’s mom accuses him of faking,
wanting attention. An only child performing aches, years in the making.
At thirteen, the visions appear in the waking world.
Angel fossils, an eternal battle, complex, beautiful and brutal.
Destiny futile. Feathers and sunlight torn from the source,
an evil force thrown from the purest white horse.
Jealousy creates a position for a gatherer in transition.
A collector of death, provided by the misguided.
He waits forever patient at the end of the wrong path.
A razor at the end of a staff, cloaked in lonely, vengeful wrath.
At sixteen, Paul is strapped to his bed. His parents divorce
from the stress. Out of answers I guess. Drugs and drips,
food through a straw. Therapy through a windowless room.
An early tomb. Then appears a familiar costume.
The spine shakes resume.
Black tattered hood and iron clasps shaped like vulture talons,
smoke colored sleeves blow without wind, vacant within.
Waiting for a child without sin to become the last amen.
Ethereal voiced storm clouds break in a powerful chorus,
cut from the center tree of the fire forest.
Rivaling the introduction to the the next millennium,
the sickle appears on Paul’s eighteenth. The last step in
the downward staircase, once thought to be a headcase,
a new life to embrace. The taker of the misleaders, the
recruiter of the dark army. Led by the hopeless one who refuses
to read ahead, white wings shed, preferring to be god of the dead.
A yellowed page turns in the book of lost prophecies
and Paul places his hand around the scythe, chosen to
be the taker of life. The quake in his back rattles his soul
and splits at the spine, tears in his flesh, malign.
A pair of crows burrow through from the inside,
poking their tar-soaked beaks out desperate
for air. Paul writhes in despair.
Twin sisters of the twilight leave Paul with the
dark gift of flight. His face caves inward.
His eyes pale. Mirrored black wings stretch
to ignite the collector of last breath.
Once a boy, Paul assumes his new position
as the angel of death.

- jason byron nelson ©2006