Author: Justin Lee Parker

All the lustre we can muster
(If it’s bold, then it’s gold)
All the time we’re moving faster
And we’re heading for disaster

i deal in phenylalanine
and fig root…
i deal in boot;
i deal in tree and ghost and tooth…
i deal in truth

Robyn Trower called from his tower of sighs. He wants everything to be perfect. Gamble with the past and you may strike it rich. Miniature ambulances and tokens of regret are both die cast in a factory in China, on a once lonely country hillside, now saddled with the busy hands and minds of machines; all this while men lay silent and wait. Cords bind and words wound. Time is tuned to the foundries of the earth, long forgotten when the land was cooled and blessed and cursed.

I am touched by a thousand such fears
Which speak of a man who blushes with tears
At the life he invents by the words of his mouth
And the life that is spent on the deeds of his house

we are cast in stone for God’s eyes to see
we are monuments to eternity
we are rays of light that made it to this place
beloved of the sun,
where there is life for everyone

Out in the baffling wind we swam
With nothing but bags of old gold in our hands
Our trenchcoats were reaching just down to our boots
Buffeting body and bones from the shouts

In filial affection
blessed be the Name
In painful consecration
blessed be the Name
In holy resurrection
blessed be the Name
In darkness and in question
blessed be the Name

If cleansing is for burial,
Why bother when the body rots
The gasses ferment and fluids ooze
The perfect becomes the monster that
Time draws back to reveal
The empty shell
The carcass, our refuse

Stories unfold of darkness and days gone by
Old men struggle and cry out—and softly sigh
And wish intense moments of fate
Left their monuments lying in state, unkempt
Insensate