Thirteen Steps

Thirteen Steps

This curtain.

Christ man! Can't you gather slack

And pull it back beyond the boards

Your feet in sleep are weakly creaking?

See it hang.

Oh see it hang and hold this world

In folds The Dream has dreamed awake

In memory made anew.

It's said the threads electric sing,

Each fibre fat with force of life,

The burning urge of light undimmed

Shines forth despite our eyes.

Sweeping mists make fists of clouds,

I breathe but more this mystery shrouds,

A body holds those hands in place,

I see its shining face.

Someone said that I am me

And I believed ten thousand times

But such belief is tragedy,

Sat flat upon my heart.

For a child described the rain

As tears the sky must weep in pain,

When told it sits in separation

Far apart from turning Earth.

"Alas this news is grave indeed,"

The sky sobbed wet in grey reply,

"It seems a rank and rotten seed

Found ground upon my hearth."

With shoots and roots it's blooming brings

Fine invite of seductive kind,

The chance to dance in limbo

As The Song plays on and on.

Across a raft of rooftops,

Cities sucked right into place,

The music of delusion

Strives to draw its own conclusion

And, in peddling pure confusion,

Leaves the market without trace.

Some listeners, though, are listless

Bored by frequency routine,

They seek a subtle something

Rarely heard and seldom seen.

A thirst for spurting juice of life

Has wrung their tongue quite dry: 

"For God's sake give us water,

Give us love so we may die.

Our days are long and lingering,

We breathe but breath sits shallow

In the chambers of our heart.

What pains the most is talk of hope,

Of wishes issued forth,

For it's plain to see, such foolery

Such passive rape of dignity,

Moves eyes away from state of play

And sees the sender caught.

Caught how, you might enquire indeed,

A question caught itself in greed,

So many webs, so many flies

And there the problem lies.

A problem? Well, not really so,

[These words were silenced long ago]

Yet sticky is the stuff of dreams

 When sleep is all we know.

It's crucial then, that thirteen steps,

Are made between the Sun and Moon,

There's room, yet narrow is the way

Between the night and day.

Thirteen songs and thirteen signs,

The climax of the twelve defined,

In Love their breath becomes refined 

And finer by degree.

Thirteen steps…"