Mapping Rain in Chalk

Relaxing the Shadow of Rapture

Hell, could we be more solemn?

More portentous than the arcane

iron of a baneful wind?

More reverent for the fading

twinkle of a corpselike child

in a deliberate coat

of hard heedfulness? Wearing

a replica moon as a

hollow headpiece filled by leaden

speech gathered from prayers in

the Latin of the yoked root?

Thousands of dried voices

rasping together between

the economies of death's

crowskin field?

Between the drawn riders of

the world without colors and

the long borders of the valley

of absolute night?

Between existence as the morning

idea and the paralyzed force

of a twilight kingdom?

Between the dry shade of an

old photograph of a sightless

river and the essence and

spasm of broken water?

Eh, so what? I understand that

necromancy is romantic

but my body and I will

lounge in the shadow between

the desire for smoothing

soothing sandalwood powder

and the hunger for peppery

spoonfuls of prickly pear.

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