The Zenith and the Abyss
You eat me at day break.
I eat you at dusk.
Softly the dark gateway calls,
gently we test the lock.
Last week, in the summer storms,
you made pictures:
A canvas of harsh pubic hair
painted with the moulds of decay;
green, rancid, bloodshot staring,
a tear clogged in the mechanics of yesterday.
The past was unwound to a noose
and you sang the trapdoor calling.
Our faces were scrubbed with wire wool;
we waited the long night
for a day to break our darkness.
In the twilight
you shaved your head in protest.
I gathered your long blonde hair
and made wigs.
Naked, angry men bought them
and wept in their solitude.
Naked, bitter women bought them
and burnt them to dust.
Our long night was futile;
our breath smelt of the gallows,
of long hours of talk, of the last moments.
We are wounded by the lightest touch.
The world is grey iron,
as grey as the river
where the desperate are trapped
before the door of tomorrow.
The moon rises.
The sky is pale silver: it does not care.
Their lips are red: they do not care.
They have lived without caring
and they do not care.
Your lips are ashen, you care.
Your shaved hair dreams of its beauty,
you wear your scars
for a soul that will not die.
In time they will heal;
your soul, you sing, still lies bleeding.
The time for morning is passed.
Green, the night cloak of solitude falling;
grey ash,
your eyes lose as we bear the pain.
We watch ourselves in the house of mirrors,
reflection on reflection.
The eye turns full inwards;
only the silent ones never lie.
That night we broke into history
and decorated rooms with the skulls of the dead.
We fold ourselves in the shadows.
In our solitude
we drink in forgetfulness
until the questions are lost,
The answers carved into the sides of pigs
by a bored abattoir butcher,
who dreams of dark blonde pubic hair
as absorbent as moss.
He does not dream of steel rivers,
of the lost, of the forgotten ones.
He slits the throats of pigs
many hundreds a day.
His hands are soft and gentle
he stands covered in warm blood
and thinks of dark blonde pubic hair
absorbent as moss.
You trace the gateway to tomorrow
you open the door lightly,
you see a junkyard of discarded moons
where only children cry.
We drink to tomorrow.
We drink to today.
We drink to the forgotten ones we never remembered.
We drink to lost stars,
the hides of extinct animals,
dark green decay growing through pubic hair.
We drink to a day full of hours,
we build monuments to immortality
as we steal a laugh
from the midst of our sorrow.
Our world is twilight.
We have forgotten the sun shines.
You sing softly,
they had us dig graves.
They planted a generation of fools.
They grow, green iron, their steel eyes
do not cry.
In the darkness their limbs entwine,
they are more chaste than virgins.
They try to dream, they try to dream and they try to dream.
They cannot dream, they are clogged.
We shall have them smash the grey urns of yesterday.
We shall smash the house of mirrors.
We shall close the gateway to tomorrow.
We shall decorate our room
with the skulls of the dead.
