love in the time of human carrion

life after hawk mountain

it's Friday afternoon and I confess
we are not meant to survive the coming of this night
but I promised Not to shoot until
I'd seen the white of God's eyes

Death's reprieve, Ecclesiastes tries to deceive us
in three's 
There is no time to be born
Only to die 
 
now the tide has ushered in the morn as 
I clean him well, 
scrub what can be scrubbed, 
lick clean my hands of blood which the lion comes and stains through this sermon in
welts

I will kill every part of him I've touched 
That is to say
All of him must meet the cleaver
crudely wounded; crudely loved 
all these years without mend 
ascend the pulpit / join the preacher

and to entice the shark with blood
is an easy thing to do

I'm to pull each tooth as it's mired down
within this mouthful of mud and sorry life,
He's a man if a man is a study in New England sky, 
rolling black in his cavernous places
all this time after me and Heracles and the Nemean lion

bereft of word, a tongue dissolves in my basement, 
the human carrion of his pallet leaves only a shade of the moon and stench behind;
he will be blessed to have no memory of it

the quiet absence of God 
replaced with a quiet absence of mine

and i regret to inform him how I've seen the light
at the of the tunnel, a cornea or two 
tucked beneath forested lashes and mites

Death wades in no reprieve, 
Me and God are toe to toe now, 
eye to eye to eye 
and there is no time to be born, 
the cat is out of the bag, but this cat is a lion who's dead on my floor

Ecclesiastes triumphs in the highest,
my sin lies within my basement, 
his freckles once loved transcend 
carrion decay. 
I've seen the red-blooded
American heart felled stagnant 
our transfiguration in three's

I said 

    there is no time to be born 

only to die

                   and now you must die