things

"I've waited so long and now I taste jasmine on my tongue, and I feel so proud to be alive. And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives."
-The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride

***

The voices of the seagulls are the whistling breath
of some resting god;
a senile deafness lumbers its way home;
I hear the panting of a jumbled soul

and a bell that strikes time in the stillness.
The colored words under our hands
fall through the cracks,
And we lay in the dirt;
the dust is so new to our form.

And he awakens with a shallow puff,
this massive god,
this prince with a falcon's skull,
And he collects me and my elders
beneath his wings.

There I undress in the dark and holy space
until my time has arrived,

until a new bell rings for me.