The Fine and the Weak

The fine and the weak
The spoils of life are both fine and weak
A circus mirror for the grotesqueries we won't speak
We won't speak that name, we won't name that wound
All the songs that we sing have all come un-tuned
It's all come un-tuned like a dancer's slip
Like a drunken old captain down with the ship
Gone down with the ship, as dust to dust
To rejoin all the bones that preceded us
They preceded us to the farther shore
Where the wheel of fire won't spin anymore
Won't spin or even light or even offer up change
So farewell to the wild, unruly, and strange
Unruly and strange, like the dreams we duck
Like the black on the glass from the stack of a truck
From the stack of a truck comes a hovering guilt
Blacking in the white lines where somebody got killed
Somebody got killed where the spool melts down
Where the strip of our life comes fully unwound
So fully unwound in an amber slick
That when we try to walk through, our soles all stick
Our soles all stick to the way we were
And the less we know now, the more we once seemed sure
Oh, we once seemed sure that the future was close
As the father to the son to the holy ghost
But the holy ghost plays unholy games
He might blink with hope, but he bets with shame
Yes, he bets with shame on an un-rollable rock
Until there's no more dust left on anyone's clock
Now, anyone's clock has a chance to be right
And still we can't divine day without invoking night
When we invoke night what we mean is the moon
We feel the tides of our women in the ocean's womb
In the ocean's womb every secret splays
For the alphabet of history to spell its own days
To spell its own days, to write its own wrongs
To bend in the pitches of the un-tuned songs
All the un-tuned songs, all the hollowed-out pelts
All the unsung saints, and the way they all felt
That's the way it all felt, when the patient and meek
Finally came to inherit both the fine and the weak