PulpLit.net

Texas and hell, twin seasons of death,
I see them reflect from the Mall
with the stench and the knell
of maggot and bell
and of bodies lumped in the hall.
All the seasons of death reflect
from the Capitol Mall:
the smell of bodies lumped
in the government hall,
the knell of the last of the wars
as we?ve known them.
This smooth society holds
mass death at bay
in strife without end, in a limited way.
The volcano of death insures life.
As the Incas of old
we feed it our young.
One by one, throw them in one by one.

Kill their men! Hail to the chief!
Burn their crops! Feed them grief.
Sow their lands with salt.

A word is sound, but a dangerous
thing.
It changes meaning like a magic ring:
Harder to handle than whip or gun,
and vaguely fearsome like a violent son.
Words of yesterday and tomorrow too
are too many too many and too many
too few.
Death reflects from the Mall.
Bodies are stacked in the hall of this earth
and they stink in the works
of our chiefs.
Throw them in one by one, one by one.
The volcano of life insures death.

Kill their men! Hail to the chief!
Burn their crops! Feed them grief.
Sow their lands with salt.

And so it was, the hearth fire died.
We are left without out fire worshippers.
No more the vagabond.
No more the pilgrim with the miner?s light.
We are cast with our light,
left with all our formulas and age.
Who will light the new fire?
Who will worship? Who can dance?
Who can sow, and care, and gather.
Will we live through night ?
night nacreous and still?
When emotion is suppurated,
then will dawn wake to hear our call?
-dawn a time for death and travel.

Kill their men! Hail to the chief!
Burn their crops! Feed them grief.
Sow their lands with salt.

It is the fall of the leaf.
The wind blows with cosmic hisses.
We?re left with the smell of the sea.
The torpor brought from the soft thocking
has gone and left us only us.
It is time and nothing waits.
It is soon and nothing waits.
It is late and nothing waits.
Death sinks in the trees.
There foams a sickness all around.
Now stinks an illness in the body politic
from trunk to head, to arms and legs.

Kill their men! Hail to the chief!
Burn their crops! Feed them grief.
Sow their lands with salt.

Away. Away. Away and here.
Away with the echoing madness,
from this system of the deadly work,
with the daily halls of human gloom
where human gloom is grown from human gloom.
Death reflects in the Mall.
Texas slithers the hall
vaguely fearsome like a mean son.
In this land of the stunning rise,
the volcano of death insures death.

Kill their men! Hail to the chief!
Burn their crops! Feed them grief.
Sow their lands with salt.