for the wake and skeleton dance

the dreamtime Dostoyevskys murmur of a recession in the spirit world

they say,

the night creatures are feeling the pinch

of growing disbelief and western rationality

that the apparitions of black dingos stalk the city night, hungry

their ectoplasm on the sidewalk in a cocktail of vomit and swill

waiting outside the drinking holes of the living

preying on the dwindling souls fenced in by assimilation

the dreamtime Dostoyevskys ponder

as dark riders in the sky signal a movement

for the wake and skeleton dance

it’s payback time for the bureaucrats in black skins

and the fratricide troopers before them

with no room to move on a dead man’s bed

is it all worth holding onto these memories

amidst the blood-drenched sands?

better to forget?

the dreamtime Dostoyevskys feel the early winter

chilled footsteps walk across their backs in the dark hours,

the white man didn’t bring all the evil

some of it was here already

gestating

laughing

intoxicated

untapped

harassing the living

welcoming the tallship leviathans of two centuries ago

that crossed the line drawn in the sand by the Serpent

spilling dark horses from their bowels

and something called the Covenant,

infecting the dreamtime with the ghosts of a million lost entities

merely faces in the crowd at the festival of the dead,

the wake is over

and to the skeleton dance the bonemen smile

open season on chaos theory

and retirement eternal for the dreamtime Dostoyevsky