Rider

Baby's ball is all blood red of flayed pigs
And silk soft little things
Fill a house hung from strings
And I fly out on my silver, scissoring wings
With the other sardines
Over cities of things mommies need
Light as gas, and half-assedly free
Like I was in nineteen ninety three.

Over the ruins like we're staggering apes
What we get is what we take
In a split open place where a man can get kinged
In a palace of panic and flames
Where nobody gets blamed by the tired
And broke down, and beat. In sunken gardens
Where there was a street.

West over water I rambled and paced
And the blood river raced like the sweat down my face
And the stadium roared. And the warriors embraced
And the golden shore groaned
Beneath the weight of my tastes. And I blazed
In the last orange hours of the day
Until the dust hazed and hid us away.

So, little baby, be brave
I see your dad riding over the rise
Crashing his whole cavalcade through the crowd
Watch them run on all sides.

And the neon white branches
And the carrion fly
On a congressman's eye
I have wrapped up for you in some old autumn leaves
And left under a rock out on Rockaway Beach
Beneath the trees.

I have laughed my best hiss to the whistling breeze
There's a hole in my throat
You can note my last wheeze if you need
And then take hold of the rope
And down we scream.