He shudders back to life as I whisper for the fiftieth time,

- Hello? hello?
into his ear, afraid that hes died on me. in what he calls my ingenious ingenue-ity,
I do not notice that he is still breathing,
so i just continue whispering, impatient, furried by his silence.
And he rises suddenly and I shrink back with a yelp at his sudden motion.
Disintegrates under my warmth, clutching him close,
asphalt amped and jarring, steamy are the skies, even if the storms float of radiator fumes.
Hubcaps biffing Frishee Nuts, Kite Flyers, Leary Alcoholics fired for vermouth and vodka,
and nondistilled 90-proof sorghum.
Hands stained bloody with the flowing tide, pressing down on his chest,
pumping life back in and out. Worlds nailed down.
I watch the clouds move across his darkening eyes.
Away from light. Away from death.
- Towards hurt.
He takes my hand, curling one fist from two
palm on palm, wrist on wrist,
peacefully mixed,
while his life pools around him in a scarlet puddle, leaking motor oil around
the bullet wound dug deep.
Lying spread out against the grassy springtime rubble
beneath a sky spread out with an evening blanket
of polluted stars shining sickly in the nuclear light.
Grips my hand in his, folded like a
star-streaked banner red and white and blue across his chest,
that flag he used to love so much
enveloped by lilies, blood, cornflower.
Exploding in a fiery pyrotechnic display, a holocaust
that destroyed Our World.
Worlds too petulant.
But we have to drive for it, he tells me. We have to destroy it or it will destroy us.
Oh, well.
And when I wake, the Dream collapses.
A shot right in the face of the American Dream. Bang!
A lifetime of messing things up fixed with one determined flash.
The final gunshot was the exclamation point, a final report to mark the END.
The line begins to blur. Just the other day
I saw the world ablaze. (On television, of course.) Pillars of fire lit up under the sun in London.
Flaming towers of burning steel, melting in the cold compress of aviation fluid in Washington, DC.
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
And in the Mojave mushroom clouds surge forth alongst ruined horizons,
ushering in the whipping bite of nuclear winters.
Fimbulvetr descending like snow from post-apocalyptic dawn.
A world in flames, a world collapsing like a fist rising above the world to pound down on it,
envelop all the light, a tree of life, blooming, blooming like a plague.
A world encaged in monolithic blocks of ice. Rendered insensible in the freezing heat.
And now I am dying with my life burning out around me.
Only her left. Only Amy.
Eyes like pooled shadows
under deep forest canopies shut out with deadened life,
green with flecks of black,
staring down at me. Watching over me. This cant be how it ends.
This is a great way to die.
And it makes me wonder,
what is it that keeps me going. Her dazzling pace?
Her curving way?
That terrible TTHuUuUuUndeRRRR roaring in my head.
That terrible haste reeeeeending the World apart.
My Violent Love. Her Gentle Hatred.
And VengEance.
We must drift and stagger and stumble onwards. Because if theres a wind,
I am not the wind she thinks I am.
Amys the wind, Amys the tempting tempest.
Blowing. Blowing us on towards pain,
- Towards hurt.
Only in the fall of our raging fall, in the grip of this ravaging cataclysm
do I find the willpower to love her even still through staggering ruin.
Gunned down in the autumn leaves, spread close against
the concrete sky, the ground pushing us down
towards the glowing embers of the dawns last light,
the burning trails of the rockets red glare
I take her hand, bitter cold, dragging me down, pulling me towards salvation.
Spread her fingers past the aeroplane lights, line them up with the F A L L I N G stars,
constellations testament to our Weirder Ways.
Fallen dragged out and beaten down but Allone with my shining light,
my unintended choice to live my life extended,
to fight the good fight.
And if I fight the good fight, will lines deepen in my faith
to craft a look of resignfull defeat?
Something I am forced to face. Forced to accept
a life forged in resentfull irony.
- You can be the one Ill allways love.
Not much time left, I know. The wound grows larger and larger,
a mirror shattered so when I reassembled the pieces
all I could see was the reflection of a Love rendered disastrous,
the barrel of a smoking revolver and the smiling killer behind.
It was all worth it in the end, wasnt it?
Blur. Tremble. My greyest sky, the coldest shade of gunmetal black.
And Ive got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle.
My fallen land, torn up and razed to the Western Wind. Scatter me against the sea, O Fortuna.
- Vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem.
- Audentis fortuna iuvat. No more tears, he says.
Tears turned for a deadlier wake,
watering the endless samsara cycles of universal sorrow and decomposing
bodies springing up in the springtime in our backyard gardens.
-O Captain my Captain -
-Shhhhh, Shantih Shantih Shantih. Love wont ever tear us apart.
My Pining King, Free and never betrayed, never sold out,
reproaching me, a kiss blowing away in the radioactive dust.
A stranger rode to town with a big iron on his hip.
And he was here to do some business with a big iron on his hip.
The World falls apart for him and for us to blow it all away
in a hail of 5.56mm rounds would forfeit all that
I allready Love of him.
This is only the beginning, Amy.
When all that you held sacred
breaks down and does not mend,
just know that death is not the end.
A little less conversation and a little more action wouldve helped.
Betrayed. Shot point-blank, a round right through my chest.
Fortune couldve saved me. But youll find out soon enough
how quickly shes willing to prostitute herself out.
She came four minutes too late.
But four minutes late is better than never.
And she returned with Amy.
And he collapsed to the earth,
hurld headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
with hideous ruin and combustion down
to bottomless perdition, here now to dwell forever
in adamantine chains of a clawless death.
If a tree fell in the forest and no one knew, did it actually fall?
Only I know. Only I saw.
The morphine syringes scatter around him. The drugs arent working.
Back alley rape. Backyard war. Sidebar massacre.
(And what miracle is this? the giant tree,
its branches holding forth us and our Love and our Burning Cosmos.
It stands ten thousand feet high, but still doesnt reach the ground.
Yet it stands. Its roots must hold the sky.)
And in Flanders Fields the poppies blow.
And Ill bury a bible in these halls.
And Ill bury a black cat between these walls.
And I cannot destroy any more.
For I cannot destroy him. Not now. Not ever.
Because through withering & wroth,
through hands strained worn by the callous beating of time,
I cant leave any more. I cant leave her, ever.
The leaves beneath me, red and brown and yellow and orange,
the dying remainders of an era once prosperous.
And she is everything to me. I cant leave Amy.
She raises me up to lift mountains.
She is amongst the scattered leaves.
She gets me closer to god.
Under her I am everything and nothing. I am a god amongst ants,
an ant amongst gods.
Without her I am nothing.
The pain. The numbing morpheic dragging. Cutting away at the edges of my vision.
The drugs dont work, they just make it worse.
Blurring. I must say what I must say. While I am still awake-
-I cant live if living is without you.
-Well meet again, dont know where, dont know when, but well meet again, some sunny day.
And Ill stomp my foot down on the gas when a black cat crosses my path.
And Ill keep my umbrella down here, Ill toss the salt behind my ear.
Ill keep a horseshoe on my step. Ill keep a cross around my neck.
Ill drape the garlic over my bed.
Mercury oceans dangling softly, water falling quickly
drifting tangling enclosing whispering
softly in our ears to let it all away,
raindrops thundering down invisible window panes
colliding with bursting stars shattered splattered
in deep impact with stratospheric noise.
And the rain beats down, down down,
a hammer on the heads of daisies
and the early winter frost rroooolllllllsssss in
and decapitates the last surviving flowers,
covering the earth with the multiplying villainies
of natures ruinous breeds.
And theres a chance, theres a bend.
Rushing in the riverside past the garden of transcendent delights
from swerve of shore to ironwilled bend of bay,
through the twisting grass and bales of hay
rushing by headlong and into perditious ruin.
If I could start again a million miles away.
I am the current and she the currency of every risk
Ive taken and of every one I ever will take.
An angel, the divinity. The incarnation of all.
A valkyrie spreads her wings over me.
Ravens flock in the air and block out the sun with sanguineous haze.
Arms reaching down, pale white arms, to receive me in a warm embrace.
Carry me off to fight the good fight. I welcome them.
My valkyrie- immaterium, a beautifull light, a pond undisturbed by tremour or ripple
no matter how many rocks they throw at her.
Untouched by the falling leaves, a fire unkindled and burning at starbright starlight.
Marvel her and lose everything. Enjoy her presence her then with me.
Drag me down into the adorning adoring ripples,
beneath broiling skies cool earth over chilly mire beneath burning stars.
He stirs and he tries to rise, Atlas shrugging against the chains of
titanic struggle. Stars above me burn lights into my back and we turn to look
up at them, the passing aurora borealis, a fading ethereal brightness.
A million eyes shining down on us, having witnessed this burning end.
The eyes of angels, frowning down upon me.
The sky pours rain, drop by drop, ocean by ocean. The blood pools beneath me,
my caressing hands, washing across her bare feet,
flowing downward, downward, downward, a million miles deep and thicker
than any river run golden with the aging fight.
The stars have shined and they shine
and will continue to shine
for hundreds of years
and for all We know they could be dead, long dead.
Stars burned out aeons ago would still appear just as bright, just as alluring.
If the sun were to extinguish now,
it would takes Us eight minutes to realise it.
The astrologers put their faith in stars, yet how can you put your faith
in something that is allready dead, that has been dead for so long now?
All my life, Ive been taught that if my stars aligned in all the right ways,
I would be safe, I would be allright.
Stars to live by. Stars to stir you awake.
Stars to love by. Stars to guide your way.
Stars to die by. Stars to end your days.
-I no longer wish to look at them.
-I no longer wish to look upon dead things.
Let us go, then, you and I, when were spread out in the sky
our restless nights and subtle lies laid out bare under police spotlights.
And under the spread of the plinian tree, I found you, and you found me.
And let me wear such lying disguises.
No car alarms, no sudden surprises.
We could be heroes, just for one day.
Or we can fall under the sky and waste the World away.
Is it like this in deaths other kingdom?
Waking allone at the hour when we are trembling with impassioned love,
lips trespassing warm places and gentle with the glow of dying care?
The warm yellow fog that creeps down from the skies
forms the prettiest clouds in your pityfull eyes.
-Ill be with you allways. Well meet again.
-Ill see you again in another life. When we are both cats.
And by you, this Dream is collapsing.
Ill destroy myself to watch you fly.
But Ill betray no Dream if you stand by me
amongst the living and the dead. For without,
there is only dragging death, and the swinging door.
Everyone betrays the Dream, but with you, why would I ever?
O Amy no, I could never let you go.
And by you, the World falls apart.
Dangles by a golden chain, which Im willing to cut to save your life.
But Ill burn no World if it turns with you the axis.
For without, it turns in only revolutions of Ruin.
Everyone betrays the World, but with you, why would I ever?
O Jack no, I could never let you go.