The sunshine sets
Over mountains and hills
The blood red of time
No time to fill

The moon rises up
Through the waters of space
Oceans of stars
Spill over your face

Chasing the sky with feet pounding softly
The grass and the dirt and the freedom
Voices are calling and fires are burning
You don't look back 'cause you don't need them

You're running against
You're running within
The path where you live
Has never been thin

There's dread at your heels
And thrill in your heart
The Earth in your veins
Tears you apart

The shifting of plates and the current of cosmos
I yell but my voice doesn't find you
Under a tree, in a glen, on a mountain
A time and a place and a virtue

A bird that flies before it's grown
You found your home in a world unknown
You broke to pieces in every corner
A single atom escaped today

Safe and sound a foreign concept
Blue beyond repair
Layers deep in plastic promise
Seaweed in your hair

A river of silt
A forest of flame
The world is a fish bowl
And the fish are to blame

You keep running still
Through thickest of night
You, losing your chains
Me, losing my sight

The witch watches withered nights
Falling, flying through their heights.

I see it there
The curtain on the wall
Where there is no window.
There is nothing to cover,
Yet it stays tied shut.
The lace tails quiver
With imaginary wind;
It drips with
Invisible rain.

She stands as pale as Parian statues stand;
    Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay,
    And felt her strength above the Roman sway,
And felt the aspic writhing in her hand.
Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land,
    For dim beyond it looms the light of day;
    Her feet are steadfast; all the arduous way
That foot-track hath not wavered on the sand.
She stands there like a beacon thro' the night,
    A pale clear beacon where the storm-drift is;
She stands alone, a wonder deathly white;
She stands there patient, nerved with inner might,
    Indomitable in her feebleness,
Her face and will athirst against the light.

The selkie sits on solemn sands,
Her hair a curtain wet.
She sings her songs of splendid seas -
A shining silhouette.

Her lily coat lies loosely strung,
Her shoulders slim and white,
She sighs with sounds of salty spray;
A voice of naught and night.

We are the thrones
Sitting squat in the gutter
Our bodies are charcoal
Our fingers are bone.

We are the colors
Washed out from the river
Through cobblestone curtains
The ravens have flown.

We are the maps
Of a civilized city
With sleek silver Saturns;
A chrome-cluttered rave.

We are the glances
Thrown sharp over shoulders
To plot shallow stumps
Of our moss-swallowed grave.

I have seen Death
And he isn't a bone-white, saggy old man
Or a dark hood with a cape
And a vile, gleaming sickle.
No, Death is much different
Than the stories of horror
Painted in humanity.
Death has a sweet face
And soft, warm hands.
He holds you while you're weeping
And takes all your sorrows
With a sweep of his arm,
The twitch of his brow.
He catches the hearts of teenagers
With flowers splattered on their skin
And fire in their fingers;
Itching and uncomfortable on their own home.
He pulls away the chains
In the young's unspoken minds.
As they fly through the air
Out their Peter Pan windows
He is right there beside them,
And the bitter taste of pills
Is masked by his lips.
You see, Death is so attractive
With foggy fingertips on hearts,
The young and the lonely
Jump into his arms,
Make split-decisions in his smile
While he just tries
To soften the blow.