Wounded Lands: Riddles in the Dark

Riddles in the Dark

I took my demon from the briars
And locked it deep inside my chest
And like a tiger who hunts tigers
I paid no mind to the elephants

I took my demon from the briars
And locked it deep inside my chest
A dungeon submerged in such darkness
That even tissue would forget

But as the city rains pour heavy
And puddles gather at my feet
Like a baboon with a mirror
I see the face… of my defeat…

* * *

A familiar face I’ve never seen
A dream of lust – beauty obscene
I’ve seen the shadows on the walls
But now their form before me falls
Pouncing into my arms disarmed
My projections, so sure, now limp
A familiar face I’ve never seen
Shows me how ill I am equipped
With golden thoughts I weave from straw
In placid hours laid for waste
While wolves plot late into the night
To muster winds that blow no grace
Upon the eagle in the dumpster
Outside the old soft factory
Or the backroom in every paradise
Where charity’s no longer free
It’s a jungle law scribed from a vision
A boredom induced fantasy
While projector room becomes a prison
And I: a decaying dream machine
Chasing a ghost around a sprocket
The chain unloose – my memory
Trying to reconstruct the moments
Polluted by denial’s plea
Broken prose and flawed equations
And entangled limb persuasions
A familiar face I’ve never seen
And the thrill of unlocked doors

And as an age departs…
Grant me my riddles in the dark
To purge my heart of its melancholy
Oh, sweet Sister Solitude
I have lain too long with you…

A familiar face I’ve never seen
Sexless but luring on screen
Leaving me sweat soaked in the night
Leaving me with desert appetite
Pinning the headlines on the walls
Probing the journals of my youth
Pining withered in my bed
For smallest picture to bring truth
To bastards of memory and dream
That form my desperate pallet
To unlock the canvas of a face
That haunts me with no answer yet
Colors of fields and cattle fences
Shades of father and of barn
Brushstrokes fashion church and graveyard
And capture shoulders bare and young
And farmers’ wives, they’d knit in silence
With grimmest secrets in their skin
Not from knowledge, but from wisdom
Sacrificing for their kin
And as sheep and pig fall weeping
Restlessly, I must keep weaving
Leaving the time to rise like sand
On the hurricane swept shore

And as I play my part…
Grant me my riddles in the dark
To purge my heart of idle longing
Oh, sweet Sister Solitude
I have danced too long with you…

Oh, dearest stranger
How much longer must I pursue?
A broken record, I’ve become
And I’m coming so undone
How much further down the stairwell
Through these beaded curtain visions
Of a Frankenstein monster
Of delusional revisions
Of a past life that may have never been
In truth, I hope it never was
Thus the dilemma of my query
Closes its many sets of jaws
As I arrive outside a cornfield
At the bottom of the stairs
Through the pinhole of a star

A familiar face I’ve never seen
A dream of lust hangs in-between
The virgins clothed only in moon
Curled in a war frightened teaspoon
And one to breast and one to loin
Dragged tomorrow by the chain
And in the morning still adjoined
Not far from where he’d lost his faith
They watched the city spread queer branches
The choking vines of the machines
The storm clouds of a dragon war
As wounded rivers slowly wean
And like some prophesy foretold
Grew their misfortune in her space
For devil’s eyes to paint as sin
And guilt to drown with unveiled face
And there lie mother; there lie child
And there stand father in my place
Dragging the hateful chains of sorrow
Burning the harvest of cruel fate
For at the bottom of the well
Stares an unborn familiar face
Where the women go to drink
Who cannot bear the lidless nights

And as the catalyst now sparks…
Leave me my riddles in the dark
A dirge for my heart’s sweet and endless haunting…

Oh, sweet Sister Solitude…
Oh, sweet Sister Solitude…
I have died too long with you…