absentee

Turn the earth to sew the curse, the salt from the ocean, the stones from the grave. Seed the sun and watch the wither. Catch the wind and reap the plague, the restless dead and the ceaseless tide. Run your routes and dream your dreams, done in by blood and Ponzi schemes. Write your dear Johns and your poison pills, you are the illness of your will, your mythologized mistakes and your tin eared prophecies. The sickness that you send, the evil of your ancestors loosed upon your children. Push button priestess shitting out both ends. You arrived just in time for the age of the deceiver. Double faced trickster with a mouthful of flowers and a belly full of sewage. Murder me last, make me watch.

The day is lost, the night now hunts by headlights and the fitful stars. The prayers were called, the gods were buried, the dirt tramped down from dancing. The old letters call, boxed up and thick with dust. Leonard Cohen’s talking about some girl from beyond his grave, nice work and so on. Loose lips do that voodoo they done so well, full steam on the make believe, a pretty hand with gorgeous flourishes. Never where I am, hardly ever where I’m not. The poison wasn’t named, but you kept pouring. Now all the damage lives inside me. It is as bad as it ever has been, and it’s only getting worse.

The empty and the ache. Ought and nought, and every goddamn night the wind’s wages. The world is busting, piñata style. The imagined whaling away at life and limb while haughty parasites suck the wealth clean out of the coffers, devils and gun hands and the gibbering apes of sheer escapism around every corner. You call down curse after curse, worming your work through the once was, taking me out by root and reflection. I squawk and weep, but I don’t put up much of a fight. I never noticed the changes until it was everything but the locks, and I was already mostly done before you gave me the heave-ho. It’s only unfathomable to me, hangdog with a head full of hyperbole, and never a real man after all. I rant and rave, fool steam and fairy fire. Foul fury aimed at the hollow heart and mottled skull where I live. Murderous words ended with love.