the glorious and splendid royal mirror masquerade:

It's for all you cans and bottles that wash up on the shore
And all the lonely churches and all the empty stores
And all the sinking lifeboats and the silent music halls
And all the hooks just begging for some art upon the walls
And all the empty cupboards and all the barren beds
And all the empty songs that fill up everybody’s heads

Come to the Mirror Masquerade, the Mirror Masquerade
Put on your red dress darling, for it's you I serenade
We’ll dance along together, until the music fades
At the glorious and splendid Royal Mirror Masquerade

Waltz right up to the mirror, raise your hand up to the pane
Your lover there will understand, there’s no need to explain
A knowing look from shining eyes, a graceful step and bow
Go to him in your brocade, he beckons to you now
Twirl around in two-four time, come join the grand parade
We’ll dance all through the shadows, at the Mirror Masquerade

And you will be my master, and I will be your slave
In the castles of ideas made from words upon a page
And I’ll teach you all my secrets and you’ll teach me how to bleed
And I’ll have all I ever hoped for and nothing that I need
But who'll sip from the chalice, and who will feel the blade?
At the banquet in the shadows of the Mirror Masquerade

Oh! The Mirror Masquerade, the Mirror Masquerade
Put on your red dress darling, cause it's you I serenade
We’ll dance along together, until the music fades
At the glorious and splendid Royal Mirror Masquerade

The whispers from the mirror tell you all you dare believe
The answers to those questions about what it means to live
And why we're here and what it’s worth and whether there is more
If you get what you deserve or if anyone’s keeping score
And what is truth and what is good and how it all got made
Into this comedy of tragedies, this Mirror Masquerade

But it’s all just cans and bottles that wash up on the shore
And a city with a million empty churches, schools, and stores
And ten million sinking lifeboats and silent music halls
And a hundred million hooks that beg for art upon the walls
And it's all those empty cupboards and it's all those barren beds
And all the empty songs that fill our empty, dancing heads

It’s the Mirror Masquerade, the Mirror Masquerade
Put on your red dress darling, there’s no need to be dismayed
No one will rise above it, and nobody gets saved
But you looked enchanting, princess, in your satin and brocade
And I couldn't help but love you, you're so exquisitely made
For the glorious and splendid Royal Mirror Masquerade

(c) me

Black Water

People listen to my story
Listen long and very well
Cause my time for singin’s over
I am headed straight to hell

I have drunk from the black waters
I have ripped the snow white veil
I have stolen from the altar
And I’ve bit the devil’s tail

I was never meant to mother
My heart’s made of river stone
Yet my body did betray me
And a child to me was born

Fair she was, but ever crying
Crying till I could not sleep
Crying through all comfort offered
Crying till I could not weep

I have drunk from the black waters
I have ripped the snow white veil
I have stolen from the altar
And I’ve bit the devil’s tail

Came a day that we were walking
By the shore of Angel Lake
Still she cried, though wanting nothing
And my hands began to shake

In my right hand was a handle
In my left there was a brake
In my hands there then was nothing
And she rolled into the lake

And I laid down by the water
And in peace, I had my rest
Drinking silence like a tonic
Loving silence, silence blessed

And I would have left next morning
But I made a small mistake
For a stranger saw me walking
With her carriage by the lake

I have drunk from the black waters
I have ripped the snow white veil
I have stolen from the altar
And I’ve bit the devil’s tail

Let them drag the cool dark water
Let them pull her to the shore
Now the water is her mother
She will never cry no more

Take me to your lake of fire
That is none of my concern
Stoke the flames and pump you bellows
Stone may melt, but will not burn

Drink with me the muddy water
Spit it on my snow white veil
Let me bleed upon your altar
Come and bite on the devil’s tail

(It's sort of a Carter Stanley homage. Vajra had the _nerve_ to ask me whether it was sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies's theme; he obviously does not take me seriously enough. It's slow & dirge-like; minor key; descending-note melody)

====================
rabbit grows roots

I want something
real bad
but I don't know
what it is

I am pacing
without moving
always late
for a show
that's never
been performed
in a cavernous hall
that never was built

And the
closest I can get
to the music
is to study
with my round, pink eyes
the rippled woodgrain
and fine lacquered lines
of instruments
that are waiting
to be invented
so they can
play songs
that have yet
to be written

The lettuces
and the waiters
are long gone so
ever hungry
I dine
on the memory
of the sound
of cutlery scraping
fine china plates
whose clay
has not yet
been dug
from the ground

Having paused
too long
I find I have
become a vine
rooted in the soil
in the garden
of seasons yet to come

My fur
shall never
turn to flower
I will have no
technicolored perfumed
petals to unfurl
all pointy and licking
at clouds and sky
but my fine new roots
will spread and know
the carroty secrets
deep within
the rocks
of this place
this place
that isn't here

Aboveground
unable and
unwilling to move
the incidental
days and nights
race around me
like a rushing
blinking river
blue
black

Belowground
where none can see
my roots keep pace
with the swirling
twirling flow of
days and nights
deeper growing
closer to knowing
whether the garden and I
belong to the gardener
or we both
belong to the
garden

I want something
real bad
but I don't know
what it is

I don't, I don't
I don't know
what it is

=======================
what you are to me

Can I follow you home?
Will you pet me on the head?
Can I sit on your lap?
Will you look good in red?
Can we drink framboise?
Can we dine by candlelight?
Can I have a sip?
Can I have a bite?

The day after tomorrow
That's when we're gonna see
That's when we're gonna figure out
Just what you are to me.

Can I sit on your bed?
Can I borrow your tools?
Can we play Go Fish
with a new set of rules?
Can I dress you in fur
and dayglo and plaid?
Will you lend me a shirt?
Will I drive you raging mad?

The day after tomorrow
That's when we're gonna see
That's when we're gonna figure out
Just what you are to me.

Can we both take a bath?
Can we watch Star Trek?
Will your knees make me laugh?
Can I lick you on the neck?
Will you hold my hand?
Would you give me a whack?
Will you draw a pretty map
of Boise on my back?

The day after tomorrow
That's when we're gonna see
That's when we're gonna figure out
Just what you are to me.

Can we dance at the party?
Can we climb up a tree?
Can we go to the beach
And the bottom of the sea?
Can you tumble my rocks?
Can we play in the dark?
Can you rub up against me
and make my sparklers spark?

Count up your yesses
And give them to me
And we'll both do the math
And then we shall see.

The day after tomorrow
That's when we're gonna see
That's when we're gonna figure out
Just what you are to me.

=========================
look at me

most of the time
we're small, tender
bits of food
sitting on the
plate of the world.
And ever-hungry,
the world
dines and diminishes us
bite by bite
with the cutlery
of days
that make up
our lives

and yet
there are times
when you say,
Look at me
and I look at you
and there are sharp
sparkling forks and knives
flying out of your eyes
and you look
back at me
and see teeth
like switchblades
springing out of my skin
and everything suddenly
runs so fast
like film in reverse

waves un-crash
on rocky shores
and sea birds
fly backwards
across clouds
that are contracting
towards the horizon
and everything turns
inside out
and suddenly
you are the sky
and everything outside
the two of us
is so small
and delicious-looking
together our bodies
form a great, hungry mouth
and we open it wide
and tear right in
and every shudder
is a great
gulp and swallow
and you and I together
voraciously devour
the world


========================

Better Run for Your Life!

Down by the river I laid in the grass
And I watched as the day and the time sorta passed
And I listened as everything sang its own tune
In a chorus of life in the afternoon

The bee said come on, we won’t waste an hour
Collect all the pollen from every flower
But the river said, no,
Better run for you life
Oh ho, better run for your life!

The tree said that life’s made to climb straight and high
And spread yourself out in the bright summer sky
But the river said, no, no,
Better run for you life
Oh, boy, better run for your life!

The mountain told me to stand my ground
Cause stone be my strength and light be my crown
But the river said, no, boy
Better run for your life
Oh, run, better run for your life!

And the sky she smiled and sighed down at me
And she told me to break myself open to be
But the river said, no,
Better run for your life
Come on, come on, and run for your life!

And the bee when she died fell into the flow
And the tree in decay chose the same way to go
And the water carried the mountain away
And the sky just smiled like she does every day

And the river it carried us down to the sea
And we sank and we settled into our own dream
And the river said, yeah, yeah, yeah
Better run for your life
Ah, ha! Let’s run for your life!

(I wrote this song while humming a reggae song that sounds suspiciously like The Israelites, by Desmond Decker - it's not plagarism, it's an *homage*. Hear a sample of *his* song in an NPR program about him here: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php )

If you've never heard it, you should. The song has, as far as I can tell, a completely unique and delightful melody.

==========================

Reverence for the rain

I'm standin' in the open
feelin' reverence for the rain
but I don't pray to your god
he don't even know my name

With a mountain in her pocket
and an ocean on her knee
your god don't even know her
he's too far away to see

but she's underneath the river
and her shadow's on the crow
and she kisses every seed
and she licks the fire's glow
she's got the wheel and engine
that's the drive behind the flow

of yes and yes and once again
and nine times ninety-nine
she's the blood, the earth, the fire
she's the maker, and she's mine

so delight her with your little dance
and look her in the eye
and she'll eat you in elation
and she'll love you as you die

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


some souls have clockworks needing winding
on wrists that always need reminding
some souls are hardened for the kill
with hearts to break and blood to spill
some souls are learning how to fly
some like to watch the others try
some seek horizon; some are hollow
some burn your insides when you swallow
some souls have petals like a rose
...but mine isn't one of those.

----------

Take the blue train at midnight, across the plateau
Through alluvial valleys of milky way snow
Catch the waystation wagon and star-bridled plow
To an outpost that sits between future and now.

The row the plow turns closes up as you race
The blade of it can’t rend the matter or space
But its metal forms stitches; its wheels craft seams
On a coat you could wear to the edge of your dreams.

Hold tight as it passes an icy, dark lake
Whose slumbering surface is cracking awake
And events of tomorrow are seething between
And they crawl towards the shore through unknowable means.

Each drop of its spray forms a breathtaking Yes
A promise the seeds of tomorrow will bless
Each grain on its shore has been shed from the eyes
Of yesterday's sorrows and lasting good-byes.

So hold your coat tight and observe as the plow
Sews its delicate bridge between future and now
And the ice underneath slowly shudders and breaks
And recall what you can when at last you awake.

----------
Thank God for the wain to wash the twash off the sidewalk. I think someone should take this cawtoon and just... just fwush it down the fuckin' toiwet.

June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape fow hunting season. Too much sitting has wooined my body. I can’t sweep at night; confused... can’t weemembew… is it duck season or wabbit season…?

Juwy fifth. I weealize now that Daffy's just like the othews, cowd, unfwendwy, and distant…

You tawkin' to me? You tawkin' to me? Then who the heww ewse are you tawkin' to? Weww, I'm the onwy one heewe.

----------
You think *I* have it bad? Check out this guy:

www.samorbaum.com/BS/BSmisc...aking.html


-----------
land, ho

Something called me to you
a brightness your eyes
but half of everything in light
has shadowed othersides

First you built yourself a tower
then you built yourself a lock
then you built yourself an island
out of yesterdays and rocks

So I tried to build a ladder
then I tried to forge a key
then I built a boat of skin and bones
and set out on the sea

and I brought along a candle
and a hundred bells to ring
and the words to songs I've never heard
so you could hear me sing

and I crashed upon your island
and I managed not to drown
and I dragged myself up on the beach
and I choked the ocean down

Now I'm sitting on the shoreline
waiting for the tide to rise
and the waves are coming to my neck
and the spray is in my eyes

but I'm holding up my candle
and I'm ringing on my bells
and I'm singing songs that no one's heard
to the sea birds and the shells

=================================

===============


Shadow artist drawing near
I know you well and why you’re here
so bend your head and bite your lip
and with a surgeon’s heart and care
dip your penknife, pull your ink
across this tired, dusty day

And in the time before the next
bold stroke of your ten thousand pens
call all the little dancing motes
and molecules and twists of thread
startled from their boulevards
and nowhere-going Ferris wheels
jolted off their feeder routes
with presupposed velocity
relative to who can say
what cause and gray effect?

A memory of being brushed
to skyfields by a latticed wing
before the long delicious sweep
along the storm cloud’s seething edge
before the vertigo of rise
from sleepy root to quaking leaf
before the long and swinging fall
to richly rotting ground?

Draw your line and call to them
of how with luck they might
through perfect choreography
like children jumping singsong rope
find narrow interstice between
anticipated cleansing breath
and emanate of glad relief
and find themselves sucked past your lips
and up into the flow

To merge with rivers of their kind
and fall in small chaotic grace
and land in sighing drifting swells
of sea where feelings have no tone
but Color sings a different name
to every rainbow drop of feeling
neither white nor green nor teal
nor any colorword that came
by way of mouth or tongue or ear
each hue one atom wide and deep
kissed twice before its nightly sleep
where dreams of past and present mix
remembrance with the magic trick
of riding the enchanted back
of photons laying waste to black.

===============
Have you ever gone walking till dark came along,
Straight into the sun till your vision's near gone?
At sunset the glass makes a bright diamond trail
And it twinkles with the effort each step will entail.

And the diamonds hold symbols that dance in our eyes
And we know we can read them if only we try and
keep walking and reading and learning the code
And they'll teach us to dance in the shards on the road.

=============

Ghosts in the mountain keep calling my name
Always they called me and always I came
Not long ago, but a world away
I saw stars round the sun in the light of the day.

Look for the place between rock and the blue
Step back from yourself to get into her view
Head for the woman dressed in green and grey
With stars shining round her in the light of the day.

What could I tell you that would bring you along?
What would you leave on the advice of my song?
Would you come with me to a place that wild,
Where having no memory's like a gift from a child?

One who would lead you, one who won't come along
One who would leave you if you're not strong.
Don't look back, not for love or pride
One may return and we'll walk side by side.

===============

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