#mothfloss

you cannot have this anger/it is mine and i will feed it until it marks the clouds/i will stoke this forest fire/and one day i will bank it back/i will shove it back into its hearth and bake bread on its coals/but not today/not today/today there is a watchtower/and today i am burning the watcher-mothfloss

there's no country songs/about the oily shine of anthracite coal on the mountainside/as you crawl upward, Ashland-bound./what did lavelle ever send off but me?//the mountains hoarde jealously/their people, all decrepit dragons in their own right,/collars turned upward against the coal/eyes averted from Revelations creeping in./-mothfloss(1/2)

call me icarus baby/my wings are wax and the sun is shiny/and i can see heaven's gates./they're made of cigarette smoke and broken glass/and i'm angling right for them/and finally i fly/past the second star on the left/and straight on to crash-landing.-mothfloss

I come from miners and fishermen, slaves and youngest sons/the Struggle is not metaphorical for me; it's in my goddamned bones./Every scrap of my DNA is someone screaming down the centuries./Save your censure, my ancestors are not ashamed of me;/I am more than their wildest dreams.-mothfloss

Mary, María, Mary/immigrant, emigrant, immigrant,/back at the orphanage door asking for your children./Mary, María, Mary/widow, wife, widow again/the jig is up the ticket's booked/the mines raising your sons into men./Mary, María, Mary/adieu, hello, adieu/only leaving yellowed windows for us/to get a glimpse at you.-mothfloss

remember when you left this jacket at my house?/remember when you hesitated at the door/seattle-bound, i was moving to oklahoma in the fall./sweet catharsis, i'm burning you out of my heart./"i feel like i don't know you well enough"/you said at the far side of a road well-traveled/like five years was nothing/like you hadn't stolen a quarter of my life;/sweet catharsis, goodbye to the mementos/i'm burning you out of my heart.-mothfloss

Dear 600 Upland Street,/I remember when you,/like all of us,/were half-wild./I remember your fairy-cages,/your sun-warmed blackberries,/the lavender growing between petunias.//Dear 600 Upland Street,/oh they've tamed you/on they've burned your wildflowers 'neath concrete.//Oh, 600 Upland Street,/I hope the ghosts of our laughter never leave.-mothfloss

Oh, loveless one/what a mess you've made./Oh, brash, angry apostate child,/what a web you've woven around yourself./Crowned in red, tangled lion's mane/garbed in stinging nettle,/oh how you drive the sheep away.-mothfloss