two black eyes fixed
on a purple sky
clouds float like bruises
bad blood flying high

spring grows like a cancer
summer makes you cry
night time hurts all over
the moon is a black eye

youll wake up one day
everything will be okay

autumn leaves you homeless
red leaves bleed you dry
winter hits you like a punch
the sun is a black eye

i promise

youll wake up one day
everything will be okay

High above the ultra-white plateau
a vultures wheels in an amino helix
above a dead horse. Branded upon its left flank is the word
“Mulatto”.
In the forest far below
an ilex rattles for the dead.
The river, pregnant with shrapnel
sulks and stagnates, her belly full of lead.
The plains are cratered as the Moon
the purple heather soothes the raw stone wound
and whispers that the fighting will be over
very soon, and all the scars will heal.
Their fires have turned our bones to meal.

The mountain gods are sighing now
and dying now, the endless sky their tomb.
Rainclouds loom, seething with disdain
and seek to quench the hungry yellow grass.
Rain lashes through the mountain pass.

Rainwater sifts into the soil
and we do not forget.
Blood chapel-sacred, black as oil
and we do not forget.
Shrapnel is sown like seeds into the spoil
and we do not forget.

He took a shotgun out one night
'cause loosened teeth and injured pride
had driven him out of his mind.

He loaded her sat on a rock
while Douglas firs shook in the dark
and beetles crawled beneath the bark.

He laid the gun across his lap.
While beetle larvae squirmed in sap
he grunted once, and doffed his cap.

A slug of whisky stained his breath
yellow saliva flecked his teeth
stars shone upon the lonely heath.

A slug entered into his head.
When morning came, the sun had bled
into the clouds, and all was red.

Daniel?

A piggish snort. Crusted eyes crack open like the wings of a beetle. Ragged nails scrape against the red-worn desert of an adolescent jawbone. A fishlipped yawn.

Ugh. What?

What did you call that plant thing again?

Jesus, James. Waxwood. It's a reddish bark. Oozes this cloudy stuff if you crush it.

Oh. Yeah, of course. Sorry.

Ambient silence. Raindrops fill with rotting organic sediment and fall into the leaves around the
clapboard tollbooth. A zealous fist of ivy tightens its tattered fingers across rheumatic windowpanes.

Dan?

Mm?

Why don't you like to talk about Clifftown?

Ambient silence. Raindrops. Ivy.

I’ll tell you why I don’t like to talk about Clifftown.

Go on.

Sigh.

I was born there. Before all this happened, it was this small village where onions grew. Not many people lived there. There was... Christ. A church, a chemist, a library and a few houses. The biggest house was this tall yellow clapboard place, which was on the cliff by the sea. This kid who lived there. He wasn’t -

A thud as a gesticulating knuckle rasps against splintered pine.

-Ow, **** - didn’t look human. His head was big and soft like a berry, and his eyes were wide and wet and creepy, and he never spoke. It was like he was empty.

What’d you say his name was again?

Never did.

A dusty rubbing noise as the fluid is forced out of a cheekbone.

Leviticus Croker. He died when he fell from a low salt cliff into the sea or something. Can’t remember.

****. I’m sorry.

Don’t be. I hated him.

A lump of pressed asphalt sends a clouded multitude of motes spinning and passes screaming through the glass pane of the sunwards window. A chuckle.

That was a year ago. They had to blame somebody.

Oh. Right.

An eyelid raised in revelation traps a mote against the skin stretched taut across a young skull.

Right. ****.

The moon shone on the trees and found
The trees were paler than the moon.
The wind was a peroxide stain
That stabbed, wormlike, toward the veiled fastness of my brain
The wind that skinned me ‘til I stood, naked and raw;
The corner of my mouth cradled a pestilential sore.
My throat was lined and thin and wan
As though it held the cranium of an antique and parasitic swan.
I turned my mouth toward the origin of my demise
And said,
“ I vowed to die amongst the trees
While human hands removed my clothes, and closed my crusted eyes
And human voices stilled my vague unease
But this will do for now.”
A crow wheeled above as I keeled over in the dust and saw
The sacred steepled chapel of somebody’s fleshless body
Writhe beside me, and in hollow whispers fall;
I closed my eyes and ushered in the shadows as the night began to crawl.

James?

The ethereal reverberation of meat on slabstone. Gluttonous panting.

What…

Gasp.

Guh… What is it?

The wail of a starving infant splits the sacred air. Startled silence. Glass cracks on an infinitesimal level.

Oh. ****.

James, it wasn’t here a minute ago. It’s like it came out of the ******* stonework.

Yeah. I know.

Sigh. Wail.

It sounds hungry.

We don’t have any food.

I know.

Cloying limpet silence. The tightening of skin across barren cheekbones.

******, we can’t just leave it here.

It’ll die of hunger either way. I don’t even know what they eat.

James, I am not killing-

****, dude, neither am I.

The infant champs on air and draws rasping breaths.

We taking it with us, then?

******* hell. Yes.

What’ll we call it?

The rustle of papery cloth on a slabstone altar.

Him. It’s a he.

What’ll we call him, then?*

Silence. A guttural wail.

Edward. That’ll do for now.

Ugh. **** this, man. I’m going outside.

The ragged scrape of rusted nails on gypsum. Footsteps like a mad zombie.

Oh Christ. C’mon, James. It’s dark. There are things out there now.

The footsteps stop. The rustle of an emaciated shoulder inside nylon.

I told you to stop doing that.

Hh-what? What?

The ****** blasphemy. You’re  laughing at me.

No. No I’m not. Listen, you think I care anymore about your ******* religion? You think I give any kind of **** about what you believe in? I’m too… (okay fine you’ve made your point) I care too much about what’s going on inside my own head. I don’t dream good dreams, ma- (okay i’m sorry jesus) I dream about losing my hands. I dream about you losing your hands. You know (****, man, you’re freaking out, calm the) you know what? I don’t think I even saw the bloodstain. I don’t even think the manhole was crusted up with anybody's ******* brains. I don’t think I saw the imbecile trying to eat smoke. I think it’s all in my **** head. I’m juh-hust –

His voice cracks. Guttural gasping sobs.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

A sigh. Rustle of clothes and the heavy thud of muscle against gypsum.

‘S alright.

Sobs that sound like laughter.

It’s alright. Look, see? I won’t go outside. Are there even things out there?

No. I d-don’t think there’s anything.

Okay. Okay.

Choking sigh.

James?

Hm?

We’re not going to Clifftown, are we?

No. No, we’re not.