Night of the Brain Thieves (Champion Leccy Swan Hunter)

Go forth
Find them
Where They're
Sleeping

Do Not
Come Back
Empty
Handed

They had been falling
Already for years
The sound of the air
Rushing past filled their ears
Plummeting bullets
Flashes and blurs
Helplessly spinning
Like broken-neck birds

And blue grows their skin
Freezing through to the bone
Hearts barely beating
As they turn into stone

They said
Take anything but that
Just let this last
They said
Take anything but that
Just let this last

And together we fell
Into the ocean's swell
No chance of getting out
As far as we could tell

And when the sun comes up
These things will all be gone
The shrinking shadows
Skinned alive by dawn

And in the light of day
Tired breaths were drawn
As though we had been dreaming
All along

Songs filled the air
Wherever they turned
The howling wind
And invisible birds
The shadows grew longer
With each passing hour
Until the light
Was completely devoured

And the flowers still know
They remember
When they walked among their rows

And the world has been quiet
Since they all went away
Long ago

And the wind carries their voices
Up the rivers from the sea
And the flowers tremble gently
In the breeze

And will they ever return?