God save the listening.

And they cry, "God save the king,

save the queen, the priest, and me"

O save, save, save,

O Ave Ave Ave,

how holy you are, with your holy teeth

and your bleach, and extended reach,

and oh how the people crowd

to hear you preach

and you teach them to say

and they pray and they pray

"God save the king,

save the queen, the priest, and me"

Say it once say it twice

Say it a thousand times or two

If you say it loud, and loud enough

the echoes might make it true.

That's how truth happens

it's how it came to you

out of the darkness laughing

So scream on with your bleached teeth

and your holy corners on unholy streets

scream "God save the king,

save the queen, the priest, and me."

With your hungry mouth

and holy smile

I will sit and wait for the bows

wait a while.

All I hear is

God sate the king,

sate the queen, the priest, and me.

And as far as I can tell,

you're still starving.

Ideal (Deal Me Another)

O! A curse on Florence

on all the cobbled streets that ever

ran over riverbeds and replaced streams.

Shame fall over Verona

blur the sunsets grey and the stars

into a dirtier shadow over painted roofs.

Ill luck on all of Italy

raisened wine and fallen olive trees

storm and drought and broken fountains.

Doom and despair, darkness and dust,

Let all the lovers cry:

We have walked the roads of Rome

and Romance is still a lie.

Taking the Company out of Coup

At least it's a creative

catastrophe --

I can always trust

you for an apocalypse

that really pops.

None of these half-

hearted half-moribund

tales that stumble across

acrid post-aced landscapes.

You scrape the scraps

from the bottom of the barrel

and then light it

on fire.

Even the necromancers argue

that you take all the romance

out of the Spanish flu

and Italian emphysema.

I cannot emphasize enough

how the empaths shudder at

your sesame street creeds

Sharing isn't caring when it involves

more scaring and scarring

than the average cocktail

with a molotov wick.

It's another 2 am Thursday

and with you

the week always ends

with a bang.

feather free

Everyday I watch you

sit on the porch and pluck

out your wings

it seems a strange thing to do

after all the trouble of growing them

but then it was a strange thing

to grow them in the first place

How you managed it with those distinctly

human bones I'll never know but I suspect

it had something to do with the boy I saw once

slipping between the trees with earthen grace

with wide hawk wings tucked beneath old denim

and feet that didn't seem to leave a mark

I know. I went to look.

But they called me back to say

that you were sick, that you were crying

through the fog of a fever

saying that you saw feathers, that you heard wings

And I cried by your bed for the angels to leave you be

The left you alone but you were never the same

always in long sleeves never with a smile

and I wonder what covered you so.

Everyday I watch you pluck your feathers

from your scarred arms, watch them fall on the littered porch.