Strewn with quicklime
& lain face downwards
each bears the same name

having turned white
from night. Strange
they should call back

apparitions who've left
no trace, whose fate
has followed & passed

into present. Crowned
inferior & assigned
to the ascendancy

might each life sufficed
show within their wounds
& if something inside

speak different
then to it also are we mediums
an open tomb for us all.

Far from hotel, city street & travel
we return not unharmed
but rather come back to scenes
already dreamed.
Given our final votive offering
she is it, Black Amber with Pole Star.
Inverted & hung upon the chest
let there be no regret
For without it dying does not forgive
nor relation rank pure to those
already gone. Without revenge
might they be carried across
& faces from the street turn back
to those passed in a crowded barroom.
Oh it all gets lost, "that's how
their reflection & retaliation becomes
not bound." Hidden from within,
may we serve to interpret the signs
& as a shore to our wanderings
become one with the vast silence
which moves manifold
to their design.

He is the writing I have come to know
& never since abandoned yet always
return back to. The experience in all
or rather the occasion before or after it
never without undoing & certainly alone
in his powers. He's with us now, but wait
there's that familiar sound, sweet cadence
of laughter, the conversation always
as if one were channeling the other
the seeing ahead to hear what is not near
but been here all along. He is not
without us or we his music, but has
summoned us here as he might tonight
just to get this down, let us all in
as he's coming back out.