Bones

I will sit in the cold this Samhain night
With you beneath and still, bleached white with age and regret
Begin the drumbeat, in the dark. Near the dead.
With your creeping grey fingers almost twitching below.
Hela smiles with her half-face. She knows.

I will laugh to the moon, she'll smile, turn blue
and the wolf, and the Woolf, will sound the echo,
carry the word over hill and town, bright fires burst
in factories
Ladies' handbags and coats rise and blaze
I'll turn, smile. Raise a hand. With a wave
I'll raze your towns to the ground

Arma-! Amma! Ah!
The stink of the ages unfurls as I screech
The words that I speak have weight but no Mass

I am become Truth, the destroyer of worlds

Dubai burns and God laughs and cries
Before his eyes, Jerusalem falls
and Mecca is swallowed by my kindly maw
The smoke of their pyres smells of camphor and whorehouses
Mannaz, mannaz, he stands in awe
Unshackles himself, packs a bag and flies,
flings asafoetida down from the skies

On Wall Street the monoliths crash and blur
I'll turn. Turn, with the smoke in my hair
Tearing up London, Milan and Rome
so the ghosts 'neath their cities are floating and broken
The tang of their not-flesh is sweet on the air

I will walk through the towns amidst rotting and rutting
As men cling to Ming vases and the works of Van Gogh
While Vincent's an angel, with wings of derision
taunting the cripples as they go home

On that cold, birthday night, I'll sit on the graves
pounding out my sickening beat
Unwinding the lies and the games and the riddles
and warming my hands on their meagre heat.