We rise with the sun in the underworld

We suffer from a graveless name

We prise wide lids

And wounds with lips curled

Over teeth that have tasted shame



Cemetery and sundown



Against the flora of nightfall

We gather like the fauna of war

To curse Aurora so spiteful

With her stake in the coming of dawn

To conjure forth the past

Those heady nights of pain resplendent

In the service of the Goddess of Death

When her sheets ran royalty-red



Moons lengthen our crypt-kept silhouettes

Shadows dance, eyes flicker in descent

Unveil the greed, our needs are bitter, spent

On upturned mouths and haunts of wickedness



We walk this Eden, a secret

Faces hidden under Leonine pride

In dusk’s embrace

We find it hard to keep it

When blood and lust and waking worlds collide



Too long have we skulked like drifters

In the cities of the neon sun

Vagabond dogs and graveyard shifters

Mona Lisas where the paint has run

I miss our glorious past

Our nightly flights of fear dependent

Like phantoms in the eaves for Miss Christine

When the song bird broke her neck



Wolves howl their fogbound serenades

Churches arch their backs with balustrades

Praise be to the shedding of masquerades

When we hunt these vestal vermin unafraid

Of the covenant made…



Draw the blinds on the floors of raw meat

There is murder in the thirst



Rich red vascular tapestries

Hung in gilded frames of nuns asleep

In dreams where themes of bestiality

Are a blessing on their Sunday sheep



Sermons hang a black gown

Over cemetery and sundown



Now the clock is harrying midnight

And the ghost of yet-to-come

Will she show rewrites of dark delight

Or the sewers we’ve overrun?

I see a winter palace

Cut diamonds at a porcelain neck

When Swan Lake crushed poor sanity’s spirit

As I threw her to it bled



We rise with the sun in the underworld

We suffer from a graveless name

We prise wide lids

And wounds with lips curled

Over teeth that have tasted shame



We walk this Eden, a secret

Faces hidden under Leonine pride

In dusk’s embrace

We find it hard to keep it

When blood and lust and waking worlds collide