Listen: the cavalry rides at dusk
Whiskey short on breath in the bonfire nights
A curse, a daydream, visions of fire, a string ’cross wood
Plucked from shoulders unsteady and years too soon
Air scorched with some Hell I haven’t known
(And babe: I’ve seen a few in my time)
Here they keep the bones, withered and wilted, flower to dust
Bleached to oil stain under northern lights
The Summer is the end of all things luminary
After decay comes the obscurity, my good old friend
Fifteen years it has been since they came
The Bird-men, painted all the colors of death
Feathers slicked back, smiling toothless maw Hello
For my daughter, auburn and heart beats an hour
Head asunder, thighs pale in bare sunshine
At the foot of this pine tree your
Baptismal waters run red across your love
Meanwhile watches with pinhole eyes
Blind but to presence, creature of scent and touch
Waits
Undiscovered are means that our ends are a mystery
Slipping forth from darkness cavernous
Echoes blood from the font
Voice of a man forgotten, a blue room filled with smoke
A green world constructed for tenants unfound
The flickering lights of a world’s stolen electricity
Batteries and acids corrosive in nostrils meant not
Even in the right direction lost to haze
Flows a river, wonders the flesh how we ever got by without it
The man docked in his cruel Owl mask, finger raised
Summoning from the rocks struck a wind
And words without voice, life without end
“Come and see, traveler, come and see”
At the foot of the mount the burning girl lays
Processional runs the blue vigil
Stirs the blood not to see, not to come forward
This world you’re rid of, I see
To the head of the line the faces are dust
And forward, finger curled, you cinder me
Voice lilting, soul and heart are nothing
There is nothing that you cannot be, so sing your song
I will come to you
Waters forth, calling to sheets laid ago
Underneath the gauze veil, touch at your lips
In other kingdoms I cannot discern with these eyes
The velvet dark blew in
Hold me close, my dear, my love, hold me
I will show you a world you never heard of in this life
Oh, sweet girl, your fingernails run across
my shoulders like ice flakes
Damp to the touch and carved in rocks skipped across stillness
No, no, soon, too soon, what have we become
Rubs the flesh to the mind, so close to sunshine,
O God, daughter
Climb onto my shoulder and don’t say a word
We’re leaving and we’re leaving for Earth
Don’t look back for a second, not a second, I
unto you as you unto me, to the starlight
To the warm tendrils of the sun beyond
The moon is only a reflection, dear
Close your eyes, have no despair, don’t listen
Not a single word they say is true, not a one
They only speak bird, honey
You and me are one and the same
There is no shame, babe, no shame
No, not Heaven, but on the way
Through the darkness and into the caverns,
that breath on your face
Don’t listen to it, sweetheart
We’re on the cusp, the frontier, nearly there
There— the surface is there— feel with your toes,
your fingers curled
And speak with your auburn hair to love
Answer the grayness with locust breath
Ruined, rotten, blood on your forehead
Dyes your fleshy silk hair red
See no more I lost you in all these dark currents
So what has become of you now?
Where have you gone and how could I follow?