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