When she lays me down She makes a sound, Speaks like a prophet from a time Before the wall came down. In the morning, When my eyes are still bleary, She looks so young still, I feel only weary. I went down to the campus to fight, Figured I may as well kill if I can’t get it right. The blackening of that girl’s ink welled in my throat at the sight As if the enemy had come in the night. What bothers me most now is how little was said, Knowing now what we knew then Before my body dies, tell me How Do I escape being reborn in disguise? Come with me, We can still live our lives, Turn the past kind Before our history dies. Lies cut the man like chalk by the rain, The faces of old lovers when to you I came. Hot tears, hot sweat, and the small death we raised In a time before you, child of Venus, fell into pain. The killing would take up a different name That would not bloom in my chest but still took the pain away. Up went the borders and down came the lines Drawn by the palsied hand of bifurcated minds, Saying, “No, you can’t even drum. I know you speak in rhythm,” Never again to caress under universal skies. My love was my country, my nation within, With its song and its pride, its hope, and its fearful kin. Before my body dies, tell me How Do I escape being reborn in disguise? Come with me, We can still live our lives, Turn the past kind Before our history dies. An authentic darling made to trust Convinced me a uniform should glove my lust. I declared the sovereignty of two must Be greater than one night’s fuss. Once the skirmishes subsided, Declaring their martial law on my home, I left no blood – Just a few more hairs on the pillow. She lays me down And makes a sound. She speaks like a prophet from a time Before the wall came down. In the morning, When my eyes are still bleary, She looks so young, still I am only weary. Before my body dies, Tell me, how Do I escape being reborn in disguise? Come with me, We can still live our lives, Turn the past kind Before our history dies.

Can you hear me calling? Can you hear me calling across the waves? Boundless blue, I have traced your lines of invisible grace Swimming this endless ocean, Yet my ears are still chaste. Does it even make a sound? Does it even make a sound When I reach out to you? Tide is rolling back, Beaching is closing in. Somehow I’m older now, I’m older than I was then. Time and time again, I have traced your ocean’s invisible grace. Can you? Can you? Can you hear me calling over the waves? Can you hear me calling? Can you hear me calling across the waves?

Stretched for days on a ration of rest, The shoreline stains wandering feet with rust. Sprawled beneath the sun, spy a feast of flesh, Strain the ancient aching muscle of lust. It’s not just the pretty girls who pose when it’s time to run. Chilling wine perspiring, engorged on expiring sun, Wasted on the depleted and cryptic. Revenge the sky in a pastel bloom wrung. Retreat behind metals, your armour, your styptic; Quicksilver rainbow, quixotic and liquid. The people have become shades against the iridescence past, Beautiful at last.

Black Albatross, your white flock is calling you home. Beautiful apparition of what I already know, Your flight is the heroine in my eye. Dragons, from the water, call upon my mind…. Upon my mind.

Distil the toxins from my mind Into a cup to drink before rest ever becomes mine.

[i. the good night] Say goodnight Once shadow makes one of earth and sky, When all that I can see left of you is in flashes of light. You can tell me I’m wrong, Only don’t use a word when It cannot be heard, Once we’ve already lost it to the twilight gleam And you don’t even know what you really mean…. Turn out the lights. Tragic treasure Ensconced in the locket’s clasp, Fine fingers fiddling ‘round your portrait’s amulet asp. Don’t let it out loud, Don’t feed the crowd. There are some things no one can understand. Saying, “This can’t be my dream, it’s so obscene!” When she doesn’t truly know what she really means…. Turn out the lights. Posturing beneath your shabby brass With eyes that shine with tears that drown the ghosts of your past. Are you really smiling there? Roses in your hair? Empty death in your eyes? Who tells the joke for which you’d die? Midas has touched this land and your memory And you don’t even know what you truly mean… Only, turn out the lights. [ii. the departure of the ecstasy] This ecstasy is leaving me! Where do I begin? Laid up in the tower With my skeleton growing thin. The universities glinting, Angels falling through the cracks; Wizardry of wonder swept aside by the hand of the hour, We can’t take who we couldn’t be back: Angels fallen through the cracks. The acid endemic to your brain Has stripped the gates, will devour oceans Bearing down on my last peregrination Until I cannot perceive my own motion. Upon the salient sanguine, stand up before the dawn. Dying lanterns give themselves up to stars In the dark heart of the sunrise. We will all feel so clean In the morning…. Oh, in the morning. [iii. eunoe] Would you be forgiven all your suffering: By only the intricate clockwork of hearts We wind ourselves up, Just to unravel at the part We’ve folded around us of the cloth Woven where moments could cross. Before you release yourself of time, Take this suffering and Turn out the lights.