The spirits that always followed
in the grey charnel fields
and faded Edens that trail behind me,
and the ones always loomed ahead
in the spires that haven’t crumbled
and the blankness that is always there
across the furtive lake:
they find the liquid feast
to tide them over before
they return to the repast
of my own mind …

Only to be captured by their hunger.

They scream and cry
as the words come back to them
and they tell me the things
clearly that they hissed
and whispered in the slips
between my vigilance
and the terrible question:

How many red? How many red?
How many … red?

I do not answer what the dead
and the not gone yet already know.

Trapped in silken streams
I take them into my hands
rolling them into my palms
and savour the burning muck
as it finally stains my skin
and self honestly.

I make the pain into a chord
and begin to spread their blended whiteness,
hammering their grey cold feelings,
burning their secrets,
distilling the vapours into an old formula …
until I have all the substance.

Folded edges fold again
upon themselves and each layer,
each wire moulds them
and the sweetness and pleasure
replaces the churning depths of Agon.

For weaving the ghost-metal
into legions of origami weapons:
their stories now my own
to unleash on the planes
of hindsight:
they are perfection every time.