Cemetery And Sundown

We rise with the sun in the underworld,
we suffer from a graveless name.
We prise wide lids and wounds with lips curled
over teeth that have tasted shame.

Cemetery and sundown!

Against the flora of nightfall
we gather like the fauna of war
to curse Aurora so spiteful with
her stake in the coming of dawn.

To conjure forth the past, those
heady nights of pain resplendent
in the service of the Goddess of Death
when her sheets ran royalty-red.

Moons lengthen our crypt-kept silhouettes,
shadows dance, eyes flicker in descent.
Unveil the greed, our needs are bitter spent
on upturned mouths and haunts of wickedness.

We walk this Eden a secret,
faces hidden under leonine pride.
In dusk's embrace we find it hard to keep it
when blood and lust and waking worlds collide.

When waking worlds collide!
Cemetery and sundown!

Too long have we skulked like drifters
in the cities of the neon sun.
Vagabond dogs and graveyard shifters,
Mona Lisas where the paint has run.

I miss our glorious past,
our nightly flights on fear dependent.
Phantoms in the eaves for Miss Christine
when the song bird broke her neck.

Wolves howl their fogbound serenades,
churches arch their backs with balustrades.
Praise be to the shedding of masquerades
when we hunt these vestal vermin
unafraid of the covenant made.

Draw the blinds
on the floors of raw meat,
there is murder in the thirst.

Rich red vascular tapestries
hung in gilded frames of nuns asleep
in dreams where themes of bestiality
are a blessing on their Sunday sheep.

Sermons hang a black gown
over cemetery and sundown.

Now the clock is harrying midnight,
and the ghosts of yet-to-come.
Will she show rewrites of dark delight,
or the sewers we've overrun?

I see a winter palace
cut diamonds at a porcelain neck.
When Swan Lake crushed poor sanity's
spirit as I threw her to it bled.

We rise with the sun in the underworld,
we suffer from a graveless name.
We prise wide lids and wounds with lips curled
over teeth that have tasted shame.

We walk this Eden a secret,
faces hidden under leonine pride.
In dusk's embrace we find it hard to keep it
when blood and lust and waking worlds collide.