I am winter's shadow across the desert
wandering in the back alleys and ravines
where the tumbleweeds go when the Monarch slumbers
to drink the last of the hiding frost

I am winter's shadow across the desert
a funeral-gaze across the Pit
to the titans that clutch the edge of my world
where, this year, Father draped no mantles

I am winter's shadow across the desert
greeted in silence by a broken landscape
whose children watch with clandestine eyes
awaiting my death in the spring

I am winter's shadow across the desert
the last grain of sand in the hourglass
the last muffled roar of Limantour
the last ray of moonlight on the horizon


the last of my kind.

Love is countless lonely cigarettes
littering a passage to the grave

a cadaver just drained of its life

its heat slipping away

like a cup of Japanese Sencha

on the railing of a porch.

I hear the roar of the Wild Hunt
         the forest is no bar to your call
                   the Spine cannot hold me from the North
                             I stalk the path to the Emerald Hall

not on my back, or behind the knife driven into it
but with weathered hands in harder, harsher lands
lessons learned, the color of blood and sweat
cast down upon the granite altars of the Monarch

could you feel me there?
         as I have eternally followed in the distance
                   I have never lost your trail
                           you have never lost your tail

the time has not been kind, and for your beauty
I have grown older, colder, bolder, and harsher in my ways
yet still blooming for your touch, for my reason to live on
for a warmth that only northern gods whisper isn't gone


I see the path, stretching through the Pit
         aflame in the light of countless dying moons
                   pawprints your love still leaves
                             filled with salt-water and sentiment

and this place is sediment, cold blood running in it's hot streets
and with ***** feet, I will stumble past it's northern reach
to the edge of your fingertips, to the bridge that leads to you,
to the scent of evergreens, and the end that holds my death


                      but I will not die before I can tell,
                                the path to paradise
                        doesn't begin and end in hell

                                       call to me
                               I have not been idle
                                       call to me
                         she for whom the arrow breaks
                                       call to me
                       my life's one and only endless love
                                        call to me
                                       I'll be there

                                 Tidewalker, call to me

We draped ourselves in the failures of others
we hung ourselves on youth

in all the small places the people whispered
"there go they, pariahs of the dead faith,
stumblers in the dark...
watchers of bruised and battered hearts"

the news of it flowed swiftly from the cities
coursed through towns and markets
to eddie in the wild hills
and seep into the living hollows

there go we, alone

the last true believers of one another,
and an intoxicating madness we could not hold

I wish you were here
to grab my soul
between your palms
with that force you carried

to press it to yours,

to show me the beauty,

of a momentary loss of control

"Don't come any closer" she said
pulling a sliver from her heart,
the one she kept on her filament wrist

hand upraised, shaking but sure
a pinprick of light glinting in her fist
matching the spark shining through the hole
once filled with an object sharper than her pain

pull them out so you can forget
so you can remember
what it's like to breathe
what it's like to cast yourself
like the night sky

she lunged, a streak in the dark

everything roiled in a chaotic ink
except a twinkle one could balance
on the tip of a needle

Blood wrote your name
on white orchid petals

Love carried them to the Seat
sure and swift of foot

Time pulled them
out onto the sky's edge.

I left them for the Monarch to devour