Part V - The Hard Act We were roughly seized and twined and thrown into a pit, wherein we saw Chimera Prime, a reeking edifice of shit. Though head of man and body of lion 'twas beast of foul composite for centuries they've called it Zion; it's just a stinking closet. Here, chimera manifold are found, the things that trade in sand, that eat the ones they trample 'round, then foul the sacred land. Some wore flags and some wore miters some had pen, some flashed swords, some were merely shadow-fighters desecrating sacred words. There was little time for such review, as some detached and horror came to drag our body out of view; and cover us with shame. They pinned us to a wall of runes, of blueprints they would use, and cut away the things they knew that we could not refuse. "First break his feet," the trucker said, no need he walk his rhyme, he'll serve our greed once out of bed, throughout his brief lifetime. And while they hammered out my stance I wondered at the other way, If what made all the difference was but inconsequential sway? There was Love, I felt its stab, they staked it in my heart, one end with chain, the other scab that pulled from distal part. One attaches with precision gauge Love's 'specially fiendish hook, the trigger for a violent rage, on the pretense of a 'look'. The trucker, now turned engineer, delights in pointing out, the things society holds dear, which he constructs, no doubt. "For women, its quite different, (though before, you're all the same) with a shield for a referent, Love will play a hostage game." "The chain runs through the shield, you can pull at either end, the one way tries for yields, the other looks for friends." "Whichever way she pulls on Love, it's the politics of war, the moment push turns into shove, 'You don't love me anymore.' " Now silence while the rest was done, the flesh was torn, thoughts obstructed, and every part of me was gone, and all was reconstructed. The demons held me down in pain till screaming all but failed, three spikes were driven in my brain and thus was God pre-nailed. At last the trucker took my frame and shoved it to a mirror, everything but death was named and that was glued with fear. Sex was there, all tarred and black, as was great Honesty, Family, Friend and Lover too, all fueled economies. Truth and Art and Mystery were likewise hobbled words, throughout the course of history, just circling like those birds. And then, as if he heard my muse, "Still you search for Innocence? You haven't figured out that ruse, the fall from 'ever since'...'?" "That is the world's own great delight, to serve machinery built ; distinctions kill in black&white when fashioned out of guilt." "Never was such, either way, my little sheep been shorn. Guilt and Innocence make prey of everyone that's born!" Then the corpse was coated with a black and sticky goo, to hide attachments bloated so nothing ever shows. Lines were etched upon the tar so faint none could detect "Each linked to an attaching scar to conjure up Respect," "A palimpsest of markings institutions may now use to direct dark inclinations to purposes they choose." "Though you may search throughout your relm, for subordinates of pleasure, 'Other' pilots at the helm to plunder buried treasure. He ripped the memory from my mind, and flung me to the coals, a deaf-mute looking for a rhyme within a tarry soul.                    When I woke the sun was gone                    The desert ground had wrapped my form.                    There I saw, in icy moon's embrace,                    The place where Ceremony drowned. In that deserted cemetery I lay on crying sand, the graves around me empty, as their contents stalk the land. I walked into the morning air over ground of gentle slope, yet knew a precipice was there beyond the edge of hope.

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TO EMMA GOOD - THE MOVIE
The Ballad of Emma Good	©1999 Red Slider, all rights reserved.