"time is a game only children play well"

"who gonna shoe your pretty little feet?/who's gonna glove your little hand?/who's gonna kiss your ruby red lips? hmm mmm mmmmmm/poppa's gonna shoe your pretty little feet/mommas gonna glove your little hand/and I'm gonna kiss your ruby red lips hmm mmm mmmmmm"

we hung tolling like bells no like strings we hung waiting a tuner we waited to fret our gray sky with gaily painted lightning rebounded from the river our fingers finding asphalt the taste of truth upon our tongues and the whine of approaching disaster speedily bearing down on us we ring we wring we ring we're out the wiring up into the branches and branches tiny glasscracks in the clouds we lost the trace of jade in all those lights when the fog moved in the forever falling particles forgotten in the forever rising column from that distant smokestack we bloodied our handles before the angels could swoop in and work us out like so many bad teeth and rise with them o my bitten hands my forgetting fingers grip me just so and drown me right now right down in the cool stony river then remind me o remind me of the spring we left back there its easy once you accept the evergreens for themselves, the red earth for its color and the taste of your own skin sweet with sweat and forgotten dust tracks
on           then closed
and off           then opened
and on           closed
and open          and off
and on               and closed
forgotten forgotten hung waiting to branch our lost bloodied angels rise, drowned in spring slipped and recursed, our tangled bodies painted on the earth our mouths against the soil warm and roiling the hope of coming snows upon our hunched and ready muscles naked in the steam my eyes fractured by your conifer fingers upon me your hair is ropes of half remembered sunshine as november day warms into sodium night aglow with our falling memory (so many motes in the blue smoky air) the smell of fire from your open mouth wakes me and I grow hungry from the lack of you, aching for the balm of your body against my body, the sweet fall of your hair on my neck fast like the river like buildings being built like the crash of voices in the marketplace

I pulled away then, remembering

"who gonna rock your little rockin chair?/who's gonna sing you to sleep?/who's wipe away your little tears? hmm mmm mmmmmm/poppa's gonna rock your little rockin chair/mommas gonna sing you to sleep/and I will wipe away your little tears mmm mmmmmmmm"