Nine floors down in the turnstile heat The suits are sweating on the charcoal seat Beat the drum on the transit gate While the beast with three heads decides your fate A leaden cloud is the canopy sky Watching the pennies in a dead man's eye The first circle is the waiting room Where the silent mouths bite the plastic gloom Gristle and bone in the iron box Climbing the rungs of the paradox. The tectonic crack of a city in bed Sucking the salt from a well-fed head Triton is weeping in the sewer pipe Waiting for the harvest to turn overripe. And the ice is splitting on the vertebrae Watch the black grease wash the doubt away When the mercury climbs and the pulse begins To strip the scales from the winter skins Is it life? Is it breath? Or a slower version of a certain death? I am standing in the thawing mud Searching for the sense in the warming blood. Past the bank where the gluttons dine Drinking the juice of a sulfur vine Further down where the river stinks And the golden chain has its broken links A circle of wire for the man of war Spitting at the bolt on the cellar door Frozen feet in a lake of lye Under the weight of a stagnant ‘Why’ Nobody talks in the frozen zone Just the sound of the wind on a mobile phone. And the ice is splitting on the vertebrae Watch the black grease wash the doubt away When the mercury climbs and the pulse begins To strip the scales from the winter skins Is it life? Is it breath? Or a slower version of a certain death? I am standing in the thawing mud Searching for the sense in the warming blood. Stretching the skin until the fiber snaps Building a world in the overlap Deepest dark in a crowded hall Throwing a stone at a granite wall Lonely as the man at the center of the lake Bathed in the slush that the pilots make Break the crust Feel the rust Turn the ancient heart to dust Before the heat returns to kill the trust. Virgil is gone with the morning post Leaving the man with the hungry ghost Climbing out on a ladder of grit Into the sun for a little bit But the sky is a heavy shade of silt Building a home on a bed of guilt The snow is gone but the mud remains Flowing in the gut of the city drains. Thaw the heart Start the art Watch the whole thing fall apart Falling through the seasons Without any reasons Just the ice And the spice And the roll of the loaded dice. Stay. Just a little while. Before the frost returns. The water is moving. The water is always moving.
