Come, nihilistic compulsion,
Come, bitter bottom of the glass,
Come, looking like a bitter ***,
Come, solipsistic mirror!

I have seen you rise a thousand times
And seen you, wise, with wiser rhymes
Arise with wild eyes frightened, high,
Suspended on a riser over night.

Full-faced, without the spatter
Mattering, disgraced distasteful
Patter, battered, left to fry
Inside a lake of fire.

Stained. Unchanged. I've faced you.
Cast your gaze upon unblessed night,
Your desecration burning bright,
Reflected rays directed -

But I chase you. I'll outpace you,
Race you down to where the emptiness
Can scrape the chalk dust off the slate.

I scrape and scratch and can't erase you.

I can't write without you and I don't know
Why I doubt you and I can't say much
About the way your touch, so sweet and mean,
Coats me with gasoline. I can't ignite

Without you and I
Lose my light without
You, empty night so bright
With rays I recognize
Comprise you.

the firmament of heaven
will vouchsafe each celestial light
save one

when dusk steals it all again
leaving those forlorn stars so far away
and us down here in the dark

i will turn my weary eyes to you
the blessed candle-flame of you
and know your light despite the night

to ache for death
like a hole drilled in a tooth
like the rot set in, waiting for truth
to scrub out the gangrene and rot

like remains from an empty shell, like the fouling after the primer's strike,
like the war cry after the speaker's voice
finds a live mike

and everything falls short.
The finish line runs away.
How sweet it is
To be left behind.

High truth for a high court?
Ha! I'd like to see it
Down here, where the doubting
Dowsers and diviners
Give away their gifted
Gimlet bits of wisdom,
Scraping for escape and
Scared of what they're saying.

Dream a little dream of
Dreary hours, sleeping,
Finding where the fire
Fries a firefly like
Loving something lovely
Loves yourself inside it
'Til the timer's ticking
Tells you you're done cooking.

How could I spend myself, seed, root, and gardener,
To someday look up and see the tree grown from me?
This is a vital self-deception, a delusion of choice,
Less a plea and more a deliverance.
Who should carry me forward through history?
What shoulders ought to bear the weight of
This ponderous name, this mouthful of dirt?
What could ever have grown in this garden
But weeds and thorns and bitter poison?
In this fulgurite waste, stricken by some God,
There's no hope but the barrel of His gun.
What monster could feed this to a child?
Better an ever-fallow field than a compost grave.

What could we do, but
Reach out and defy rapture
As the light took us?
Come the fire, come what remains,
Our dust will be together.

Now I have seen divinity
In clearings wide as all the sky,
All grassy green and riotous:
Long blades a-rattling, aimed at Heaven,
Warring with an unseen wind.

And I have seen futility
As plain as winter's frosty breath,
Where fields of green gave way to death
And skies of blue surrendered, too,
Wrapped up, abandoned in a white tomb.

They'll muster up for war again
When Spring trips in to dance and sin
As if their bellicose endeavors
Ever had a snowball's chance.

And here is Hell, their every movement
Sisyphus against the rock -
Each blade of pristine imperfection
Dances by the wind's design.

The summer sun's an auger drilling deep
To sap my will and hasten my decline,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
From when its faintest rays begin to creep
Beyond the long horizon's boundary line,
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
When morning comes, I'll buy my living steep,
But living wilts me 'till I can recline
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep
As if I died, as if I'd get to keep
The scrapings that I'd earned, as if they're mine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
Each moment sowing seeds I'll never reap
Comes twisting down around my brain and spine -
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
All wisdom, wits, and words ring hollow, cheap,
Some wilted offerings at a broken shrine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.

Your humble florets hug the rough-hewn stone,
Your yellow sunbursts shock against the gray,
All tangled up together, none alone
As, stem to stem, you ward the morn away
Reminding me of duties for the day:
To comfort those who suffer all alone,
To stand with those who struggle on their own,
To see an obstacle and find a way.
It's toil, travail, and trouble for no pay,
But look how far we've come and how we've grown -
A wallflower's a humble thing to be,
But tangled all together, they are strong.
The bonds we forge in striving, all as one,
Enduring tests? They will not be undone.

Formalist conceit: striving mad
'Til driven mute, the pattern
wraps you up in a
blanket made of shackles.

See the poet Pagliaccio
Suffer muses' scorning laughter,
Bound and stricken witless, dullard.

Sheathe that poison knife you call a tongue,
Leave the pen your gun in its holster.
Cast your bullet words into the gutter.

The formless form: scatter words and
Enjamb your wits against null space.
The water is the container, no buckets,
No brackets. From disorder, order.

The weight of a dream
Broken up against the rocks
Of my distractions:
I'll abandon this one, too,
Content with the same old things.

I know a man who locks himself inside
His head, his conversations, tucked away
Behind a maze of cheer. Each day, he's lied
A thousand times. He clocks out for the day
And, free but weary, sheds the mask for sleep.
I start the day with coffee, bitter, black,
Which suits my mood just fine. I earn my keep,
then turn around and give until I lack.
The coffee doesn't last, and by the end
I've found myself a stronger, harder drink.
I watch him bottle workdays up, my friend,
And brew himself instead. I'd like to think
We both get by. That doesn't do much good.
This place devours us and drinks our blood.

Parade of bones, ride high
Filling up the whole sky,
Past where my hands can't reach.

Bleached by sun and twisting,
Hanging like chimes singing.
Dance on, something like free.

You'll be gone tomorrow,
Split and cracked for marrow,
Pouring out your lifeblood.

Down below, the living
Never got forgiving,
And it sure ain't easy.

In the end, all is made right.
The page, so pristine, so vulnerable,
Awaiting my every error?
It's all set right, wiped away, and nothing.
Nothing remains of what I've wrought.

Perfection comes at the tip of the scalpel,
Carving away and down into jumbled
Words, each its own perilous
Non sequitur. They fall away in tatters.

The only peace is in purging them
From the mind to the page,
Then from being to unbeing.

This is no way to get published.
There's no fulfillment in the empty book,
And even less in an empty hand.

The night winds down to embers, left to die
All smoldering and seething, coiled apart
Like rattlesnakes engaging eye to eye
Instead of lovers sharing heart to heart.
This could have been avoided, some would say,
If they were different, were these different times.
Some better, more auspicious holiday,
Perhaps, but winter offers bitter climes.
Now elsewhere, things are better. Elsewhen, too.
The curtain falls across an empty stage,
Our actors long departed, longing too -
What's longing, as you're flying from the cage?
Together and together, free as birds,
Beyond the humdrum cares of poets' words.

If a picture buys
Something like a thousand words,
Which of us is robbed
If I should, as a kindness,
Paint with so few syllables?

puzzle me this, mr. jigsaw:
when did you cut me down?
why did i step on your block?
if i did, why would i bow my head
and trade my peace to you
to be another piece of you?

i know the rest: i was born dead
and life is what you poured for me
a glass of bitter shackles and a path
of brittle bravery

i walk your walk, i talk your talk,
i wear your shirt across too much gut
and not enough guts

i bob my head to your tune,
my heart beats to your beats,
my addiction is your beast,
the monkey on my back called
fitting in

A florist’s dream swept through before the sun
Peeked up past the horizon, burning bright:
An April shower scouring the night,
A soft cascade of blessings set to run
Down windowpanes and eaves, down ruddy dun
Of brick and craggy stone alike. The sight
Of sunrise sets the dewy world alight,
Each blossom scintillates, an all-in-one -
In gazing into crystal *****, one sees
A multitude, a myriad of hopes,
A million shrouded possibilities,
The fascination of each half-dreamed thing,
But in the dawn, my rooftop’s rain-slick slopes,
I see the blooms of May begin to spring.

The lights stretch back for miles, hollow stares
all trained toward the twisted, shattered steel,
waved on in pairs and threes like visitation lines
at ******'s speed, slow enough for a glimpse,
high enough for everyone to get a turn.
The night turns every shade of paint black,
each window to a tinted mourner's veil,
glass shards strewn by an uncaring hand
to scintillate like starlight in the glare,
sirens wailing away like the bereaved.

I'll while away the summer breeze with you,
Content to watch your smile outshine the sun
Our fingers twined while watching skies of blue,
Our laughter rising as we see clouds run.
I'll stroll with you through autumn as it flies,
Its reds no equal to your blush, its golds
******* by your irises, your sun-ringed eyes
A touch of warmth before the coming cold.
We both know winter must descend in time,
Despite the sun and smiles, the golds and reds;
I cannot fear its gray and chill. A rhyme
From me to you will ward those from our heads.
In passing that with you, I welcome spring;
with you, I've faced much worse than growing things.

the moon despite
its bulk
seems small from here

the fury of the stars
signifies nothing
but a cute twinkle
in a smiling eye

funny how injustice
withers to nothing
at a distance too

Passion-flicker pyre,
Pipe the heat around us.
Brace your shoulder's burdens,
Burned to smithy sparkings.
White-gray flakes of winter,
Wilting tinder's children
Scraped together, given
Gimlet stares and scattered,
Dusty little leavings.
Lean against another
Passing bottle-poison,
Poise and cold forgotten.
With a little winking,
Wish the glass a fullness.
Call the bottle closer,
Clothed in sunset glimmer.

By the time this reaches your ears, if
Someone chooses to spend life speaking death,
Know that I left you nothing but dust.

I won't offer you a pretty corpse to stare at,
A bower to water with tears I didn't beg you,
And my cold hands won't rest under yours.

They won't stitch me up or mute me any more
Than I mute myself, leaving these words
On the lips of someone who cares enough
About you to share them.

I have left you dust and ash. If you must,
Go ahead. Take a vial, a fistful. Scatter them, or
Keep them, or whatever feels right to you.
I'm not much for demands anymore.

Know that you hold in your hands nothing.
My transfiguration is complete - even that
Gray waste between your fingers isn't me,
Not anymore. I've moved on. You should, too.

Will you - your sun's inferno burning bright,
Your radiance demanding all the sky -
Reach down a blessed fingertip, tonight?
Will hands know how to meet as you and I
Lock eyes and blind each other with our light?
Let darkness fall. Burn me, your firefly.
The gods will have the sacraments they claim.
These words, an offering, burn just the same.

And will you turn your moonlit face from me?
Will midnight mystery reclaim your smile,
As silver starlight fades to reverie
Until the sky hangs empty, mile for mile?
If I must spend my sight, myself, to see,
At least we burn with your exclusive style.
What shades of you remain are paradise -
A shame I won't bear witness to you twice.

The silence rages at the walls as,
In the bowels of the science building,
Thirty sweating, stifled faces stare
Through the glass of flat-bottomed flasks
To witness annihilation: acid and base
Finding a measure of peace, as it were.
In measuring and pouring caustic hell
How bile overflows in a rush to quench
The rising roil of acid in your gut,
They replicate results nature produces
Largely by accident, and so do they.
Later they'll forge their reports
With Vulcan's own creative gleam,
But here, it's patient swirling,
Steady hands, and holding breath -
Excited, maybe tired, maybe terrified.

It seems so innocuous the first few times,
An innocence and an unknowing. It's fine.
"But, I mean, where is your FAMILY from?"
Sure. And I'll explain: that is complicated.

My patience wears out pretty fast nowadays
So I try to bite back all the bitterness
When faced with the expectant empathy
A vivisectionist might spare the dead.
So I dissect myself with a practiced ease:

My mother came from Guyana, a bounty land
She fled so long ago. I never ask her why.
My father wasn't much of one. We don't talk.
Me? I'm from the most hated place on this Earth:
New Jersey. They always seem to expect that.

A simple answer for a simple question,
And I know they only asked because they meant
"How come you don't look like me, so tall and dark?"
And I'd smile if they were honest about it.

Splayed out atop the the table, stupefied,
Etherized, dreaming anything but excision,
Witness the specimen's unnatural habitat.
Life stains the whole of its existence -
See the sacrament of its entirety, its divinity,
Its flesh made manifest and merely flesh.
It mocks this menagerie with every breath
And, aping its peers, struggles, strives, dies
For the pittance this world lends it.
Confronted with the end, it spits derision.
Confronted with the start, it cries in awe!
What a nonsense of a creature we see here,
This enigma we recognize in ourselves:
The human, being.

The music box grinds down to silent rest
Between a crone’s rheumatic, weathered hands.
A simple enough trinket, she'd attest,
But quick enough to answer her demands:
Her brittle fingers wait for it to cease,
Then seek the winding key, its battered brass
All lacquered in patina, thumbprint grease
And dusting left undone, its fragile glass
A testament to things left well alone,
A dancer wrought in crystal finery
Awaiting his accompaniment’s tone,
His patient poise the winder’s reverie...
Returned, rewound, to tabletop in time,
The music box begins, again, to chime.

All we want to hear about is love and
               Madness, wounds left in the mind
                              Where what's taken for granted
Was ripped out and scattered, just ash.
               Maybe just madness, then. Addicts
                              Left shaking their cupped hands
Trembling out aching, quaking desire
               Where stillness arrives with a kiss,
                              Where confession pours crimson,
A ****** of claret. Spilled into a glass,
               Sloshed across a tongue, breathing
                              Bitter, barren, dry - washed down
With another glass, until the flavor stains
               Teeth and tongue and lips. We are
                              What we drink: water and blood.
We are what we love: madness, confession.
               Does a ****** see in their subjects
                              The viscid revel of their own scars?

Another night staring skyward where
          Every creaking shift fills the world
                    And the ink-black sky's toothless maw,
Shocks and aftershocks of sound
          Where a moment's discomfort swells
                    To a frenzied crescendo, incessant,
Pressing against skin from within
          Until a saint's patience would break
                    Like lips parting for a stifled sigh.
Midnight falters and fades to dawn,
          Surrenders to the unconquered sun
                    Who, grinning wide as the horizon,
Watches the twisting, turning world
          Tear away from night's dreamless womb
                    Sleepless, stumbling away in a daze.

Wherever grass grows wild and tall
I'll think of you beneath it all,
A secret shared with earth and sky
And no one else.

Where winter came to freeze a heart,
That summer thawed us both apart
And somewhere in that hazy heat
I laid you down.

There's funerary flowers there,
Run wild and overgrown with care.
I think I'll take that wilderness
Before your chains.

A shackled love, a fettered life?
A rarer smile, brittle with strife?
All that, I'll leave behind with you
And go alone.

the trouble with trouble is
waiting for the next big hit
sipping on a bracing shot

the jitters could be the espresso
or everyone biting their tongues
choking on the unspoken name
of fear or dread or the grinning grave

but the medicine does work
bitter coming down to sit and clot
where the stomach meets the heart,

so your eyes can open up to a world
which wasn't yours, but the dream tells you
it could be there waiting in your hands

so trouble can wait another sip,
another slip, another dream
where time and space and all between
come still

Pour it out like water from an empty sky
Before you turn and see the clouds,
Like salt sloughs off the shovel's edge
Once ice creeps in to choke the streets.
Pour it out like the fire searing your veins
Where passion became love became fury,
Like ink left to seep into pristine paper
From another careless stroke of the pen.
Let it out, like the words tied into a knot
Resting heavy between tongue and throat,
Like spit and bitter bile left to sit, clotted.
Let it out, like breaking whatever breaks
When those shackles slip from your wrists,
Like stepping away from the cage to fly.

Drawn deep on the seething alcohol sting
Of a summer-sweat mask made with every effort
Drinking down to the bottle's bottom.

On the way, we'll see a dozen devils in familiar faces,
Friendly smiles and devilish grins, temptations,
Invitations beckoning attention and so much more...

The heat washes down to lingering hands, to lips, to eyes,
Dragging them away from propriety, tangling their leashes,
Stripping away restraint, shattering will.

So, this is godhood. This is how it works.
It's dreaming up a world and killing it,
Abandoning the foibles and the quirks
Of crushed-together crumblings and bits,
Then sweeping out the wreckage with a curse
And carving out another fever dream.
It's wandering a mindscape universe
And sifting through the crop to find the cream
So you can save it while you burn the rest,
Just for the room to have another try.
The lovelies you've been cradling close to chest?
In time you'll cast them off to wilt and die
But for a while they're almost what you need.
Go raze the field and plant another seed.

Here, where your searing body pressed close to mine
Puts Vulcan's furnaces' heat to frigid shame,
Where crashing sun-showers rinse away the brine
Of held hands, shared secrets and our glancing games,
Where fleeing through rainy May and summer wine
Brings together close encounters, whispered names;
Here, more as two than just ourselves, **** the cares
And **** remembering what awaits out there...

There, far away from home, hemorrhaging heat,
Left to my own hollowed-out devices
Where the concrete jungle strangles every street,
Leaving lives wilted and dry, no surprises
Where novelty passes for a catchy beat:
Here, alone, all identity is crisis.
The wasteland surrenders in time, have no fear;
With my eyes shut, I can see the path back here...

Down where the ocean drowned another day,
Where silver shards of moonlight coalesce
As salt-spray rushes up and falls away
Like laughter, murmured out with a caress,
A dreamed-up Venus wreathed in seafoam light
Steps lively, dancing lonesome on the strand.
Capricious in her shroud of murdered light:
The sea-witch calls a lover from the land
'Til, tangled all together in the neath,
Adrift in trance below the rolling waves,
Eyes meet, then hands, then lips. Why stop to breathe?
Her siren-song calls out to passion's slaves
And once the sea's crescendo drowns out dread,
She snares a heart and makes it hers instead.
Wrapped close enough to strangle, clinging tight
To every curve, each shifting of the tide
As if the midnight moon drowned politesse
To crush together spite and searing lust:
A tempest in a bruise-black dancing dress:
No pity for her prey, ****** dry, left dust.
I dreamed her laughter and her wicked grin
And barely dragged myself, with stifled scream
From drowning in that sweet, voracious sin -
And waking, I grew desperate to dream.
Eternity I spent all piece by piece
'Til, blinded by the darkness, I could slip
Beyond the cruel moon and find release
In Venus, and perfection in her lips.

If I could bless you, yet to come,
If words could bear their power down
Through fretful days and fearful years,
Through all your mother's silent tears
Spent sparingly while dreaming you,
If I could press lips to your crown
And whisper wisdom, scraps held dear,
Preserved as desperation grew -
The memories, the failures, too -

I'd give them freely, every one.
I'd rob you of your first frontiers,
I'd slay your pains, as parents do...
Or as they wish, but that's no life.
I wish you joy, not absent strife.
I can't be kinder than the world,
Not if I have to leave you here.
It breaks my heart to be unkind,
To do you wrong, to harm you so...

But I will see you rise and shine,
And I will see you stand and grow,
I'll see you fight and try yourself,
I'll see your agonies and smile,
I'll try, I swear I'll try. I will.
But if I bless you, little one,
So far from here, still yet to come,
I can't give what I haven't found.
I can't wish what I haven't known.

Sometimes, the sight of your two-tone,
your brick, your stone - All hail! -
demands my glee. It rips it out of me.
It is sacrificed on the mountaintop
for a distant harvest, sometimes;
for surviving winter under your oaks,
your maples, your falling branches.

But I love your cold, your winter,
knowing winters make us strong.
All hail.

I dreamed of you again last night,
A Venus wreathed in seafoam light
And sheathed in midnight,
bruise-black dress all cinched up close
Around your figure, clinging tight
To every curve, each tidal wave -

As if the moon, tempestuous,
Stirred in together lust and wrath
Her darkened face all smoldering,
No pity left in her loving eyes.

I dreamed your sweet, voracious sin,
Your laughter and your wicked grin,
And barely dragged myself away
To wake before the dawn could come.
The bruise-black sky awaited me,
As if my eyes could find you there.

The moon, so blinding-bright, just smiled
That deadly teasing twist of lips.
I won't deny. I searched her glare,
Spent fragments of eternity
In one more step, another slip
Before the slide back into dreams.

A boarding pass, a taken seat:
Deny the oft-occluded street
And while the miles away on high -
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

The cramp and bustle of the aisle
Refutes the notions "sleek" and "style",
But, packed and stacked, we came to fly -
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

I'll miss the rails and roads, well-tracked -
And miss them more, my stomach wracked
By nerves, by swerves, by wind and sky -
Good lord, preserve me if I die.

"I loved the skyplane's daring curves
In youth, but now her fuel reserves
Do more to shore my faith," I sigh.
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

I ache to meet the ground once more,
But not too soon. If that's the score,
I plead, spare my beloved's eye.
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

A constellation glimmers atop the pavement,
Shards scattered carelessly, violently,
eager to catch the headlight lamps.

A galaxy draws the eye as if to spare it
The twisted crush of steel and blood
Parked nose-first in the drainage ditch.

The gutter catches what remains,
Trenches carved through the lip
Where it chokes around the wreck.
It can't swallow fast enough to save
Some mystery, some dignified tragedy,
Leaving only something raw and lost.

Let's bask atop this spinning stone
Where sun-glow sears the soles and skin
Until it reaches bleaching bone
And kisses it 'til wearing thin.
Let's savor summer's coming-home
As if it never will again.
The heatwave scorches off our fears
And sets us free. Scream joy and tears.

The blacktop, lapping at your heels
Like hellhounds barking out dog days;
The noonday shadows' faint appeals
All stifled in the phoenix blaze;
The April blossoms wilt and peel.
Their season's passed. They cannot stay,
Not while the sun is in its power,
We'll watch them die within the hour.

The azure sprawl of Alabama's sky,
Its cataract clouds wiped away, unstained, stares down like God's own eye.
There are no stars to guide us through the blue,

No landmarks for a stranger neck-deep
In the strangeness of a strange land
Where everyone looks back with
Affable suspicion, pleasant concern,

But home is where the heart is, so maybe
Part of home is here, this blessed mess,
Where under God's eye we toil away
Forging memories from spent time.

"The brain - is wider than the sky -"
But not here.

All beauty must fade,
          wither, crack, split, die,
                    and so too the beauty
of sweet hospitality
          loses something magical
                    when put to a test.
Splintering down to
          strained smiles,
                    curt little whispers
behind a turned back
          summon up strangleweed
                    between the gaping cracks
of a path we walked
          for so long until "so long."
                    There's a blind desire
to douse what remains
          in that left-behind radiance
                    with a drowning of petrol,
a gasoline baptism,
          and send it out with a pyre:
                    something to remember.

Our encounter begins, O glass of amber,
With your trembling surface inviting my lips,
your glass's simple flare; I may be no gambler,
But I see you quake as glass meets fingertips,
And you're not all sweetness - you'll change my timbre
Certainly enough - my gentle grip you nearly slip
As I survey your amber surface, raising you
Just high enough to sample from your bitter dew.

I cannot begin to wonder just how long
We've spent embracing each other, all wrapped up
And tangled together - I see I belong
To you as much as you to me - in my cups,
That desperate, furtive hunger spins a song
From my whispers: the way you've bound me up,
The way you draw me down, your bite on my tongue:
Your every breath invades me, fills my lungs.

In our time, we'll grind each other down to dust
Dissolving in that weary, seething flavor
Shot through every lingering of lips; I trust
My temperance will tire you - still, let's savor
These summer days, their mists ensuring the rust
Which withers us to nothing - In all, I favor
You against my lips, your fire dispelling cool:
In reason, in temperance, I turn the fool.

I offer no defense of my hidden sin,
Not when it wastes a fragment of eternity
In frivolous expenditure, stretched so thin
Across another vast, sprawling century.
And if I would - if I were - where to begin
This tour of a macabre private gallery?
All things, even this one, have their beginnings:
Thus, my humble collection's underpinnings.

Called to this divine vocation, I set out
Each time I encountered one who, crafting art,
Demanded my attentions. Please: never doubt
The truth of my intentions; my swelling heart
Adores them, falls in love as they sing or spout
Their lifeblood inspiration. Stepping apart
From all of this, don't stare so miserably!
Can I be blamed for working literally?

I love them, one and all, and here I curate -
Safe from all the ravagings of time, if not
Precisely speaking safe from my own mandate -
The workings and workers who inspired such thought,
Such incisive action. I lay them in state
With tender care, never sold and never bought.
Perhaps a glance at my favorite pieces
Might reassure you? My latest releases?

Observe the cuts into copper, engraving
Her fury, her passion into the cold plates!
How torturous, yes? She recalled it, raving,
Having sought me out to deny the ingrates
Assailing her solitude, as a craving.
I preserved her passion. Here, her works’ mates:
The roses she treasured etched into the hard bone
Of her shoulder-blades and skull, instead of stone.

But so few beloveds grace my humble home
Despite my voracious eye surveying scores
Of likely lovers - artful, otherwise - some
Lacking, left uninvited. Those I adore,
I long to beckon close - close as you now come.
Join me? There's more to show you, so much more,
And I hope you'll linger tonight, to dine.
I've just the thing for an artist who loves wine…

Hearken, seeking hero:
Hear a scalding skald song!
Venture bold and bravely,
Bring a vintner victuals,
Sup on mead of mulling!
Mete the morning's merry,
Fortress; stand in fastness,
Fear no sorrow stalking.

Keep watch. Night saps you, catches you with a blackjack,
drains you like sand sifted through an hourglass
running low on patience, low on time, low on hope,
but it's 11:00 p.m. and you've been here three days
and so has everyone else so you keep quiet and

Keep watch. Under the fluorescent hospital lights,
your stage awaits so you put on a brave face,
paint that clown mask and start the production:
not tears, not fears, just enough to get them through
to the miracle waiting for them, but you've been around
and you know miracles ain't cheap, so keep the faith and

Keep watch. Through the racking coughs, through the
distant sobbing all receding into absence of thought
to match absence of action, as your turn comes up
to give this mockery of last rites, to sanctify the dead
and soon to be dead, to keep some kind of memory and

Keep watch.

What would you do for love? Sacrifice and all,
that's beautiful, but the gift that keeps on giving
Is horror.

Would you vivisect yourself
And bolt them down against your bones?
Would you tailor yourself to fit?
Would you care, just a little bit?

Would you strike the sun from the sky?
While others break and bend and die
Would you turn to your dearly beloved
And say "It's okay, we'll make it through"
With that soft smile you know they love?
Would you lie? Could you try?