in the land of the dead

where summer fails to warm the birch's bones
from hue of black to shaded white
lay echoes of mists as shaped as ghosts
that tumble through the archaic motions of Labor.

i grasped a branch and pointed there
at the forlorn father with blistered hands
and wondered to what mushroom mead he had tied his mind
as his hands would not quit at the still of his dying master
through violet fog and writ of parallel laws
his throat grew coarse, his face even worse
while his son worked a rotten jig
and mother's back arched in the pain of a shot black bear
while sister's lessons lay on that stump
where polluted breeze had signed its course,
the Lessons there from ghosts.

certain strawberry dew upon thine lips
i heard thee speak in tongues of scarlet
while spinal columns snapped like yew,
your dress,
it was as White as sails rigged for the dawn
when simple figs and honey ale
would reach from ropes and yardarms flanked
by barrels of sweet cranberry tea.
while the World lay stuck in its greasy bawdy blackened Work
we sat on sea shore cliffs and yawned.

the old spray from salt, lifting up ship's bows
as the forestry fell apart in caustic Sun,
the nation's blood in small wrist veins
of a Seamstress' form exhausted in the black streets
beneath maroon banners
while the engines burnt their horrid mess
and newsboys mouthed the words of the Mad
through alleyways and backyard puzzles
laying there skewed like the Bones of Something Wrong.

Bodies unexamined in fashion's flair,
a coachman's form propped up by silk lined vest and fair flaxen hair
as the coach rumbled through the road
we waved our black pistols and fired into the air
well, he tumbled off and what we found in those flamed-scarlet trunks
was gold and silk, new dresses, and jewels from some Affair
where pearls had been bartered as a matter of course
to keep the Dead from breathing within their battered Lair.