Codeine Dispatch

Today has been a ghost day.
The sage has gone to seed,
Pronouncing only half of what you
Want is what you need.

The rafters bleed piano chords.
The air hums like a string
Along which hang the memories
Of long-gone distant wings.

The Halfway-House is lurking
Between terraces that glow
Like fireflies dictating
Why you care for what you know.

The distant kings are fading,
Sabres sabotaged by sin.
Who cares enough to save us
While we beg to be let in?

The tiles are ravening mortars
And the alleys, barrels cocked
At the empty sons and daughters
Who's epiphanies were mocked

By the corset of conformity
Upon the bride of gloom
Whose chastity, not charity
Corrodes the cruel schoolroom.

All fathers, undertakers,
All mothers mortal urns
Bequeathing death's exuberance
To those who will not learn

To cast aside the lover's yoke,
That grimace through the bones,
Of loyalty borne of the genes,
Not of decision honed.

Us lowly saints decrepit march
Through heathen fields of tar,
Lament the song of pilgrims proud
To know not what they are.

We're the suicide watch leper boys
Whose anthem's weary choke
Sings we're the offspring of the punchline
Of a long-exhausted joke.

So on Katie's comedown cradle,
Silence swaddled me in sweat,
That I sip from at the table
Asking have I been born yet?