Part IV

the terrain had a stubble of dry weeds,
and infinite brushes and streaks of brown
in a gamut you never thought could happen.

In that season the dust of fallen empires
were finally reaching our whoring shores,
yet we despised those echoes of our mediocrity.
We took to sacrificing our young
(the egoism of our self-made gods).
And all our legacies, we felt compelled
to consign them to oblivion.

We recreate death every morning,
blackening the fresh snow with curses and blasphemies
- that only in the Southern countries -
The clockwork exacts its tribute, its drowning.

After that, it's certainly hard to look raw,
menacing or warrior-like
(I still wonder there are no shaman recruiting agencies,
or there are?)

Our parties are silly; numb pursuits of
a debauchery we never knew first-hand, never devised,
and yet we fancy ourselves
masters of decadence, ha!
(as if we could muster spirits other than lowly)

I wish our shitey gods demanded nakedness,
oral sex and alcohols.
Feral, for fuck's sake!
Not that imbecile meekness or that love of death.

The appetite for carnage is one
you cannot quench, increasing the burden,
swelling until you burst,
like a meth lab in the sticks.

The ever present tantalizing illusion
that rebirth is possible somehow.
Through ritual or by virtue of technology.
Fire, metal or virgin blood, who cares?
Countless people jumped into sea or fire
- the desire to become a carcass -
backed up by that obscene promise.
Lap dogs, worms and other lowlives
gather at the iron gates of void and loss
(accruals, accountants, compounded debt).

Men were not made to take control,
- you should study for helmsman kid,
because that job is always in demand -
most just want to be pushed and pulled by destiny,
inflatable dolls in the ebb and flow,
all of us wishing the tide
would wash us on more fertile shores,
ones where the sky still has milky traces at night,
and the men know how to fight a proper fight.
(yet we want no demands,
no strings attached, fortitude of being
being too much of an effort).

And this is where we stand today...
and the lute tinges on and on.