evening (in five parts)

(1) See the masts cut into new horizons
Holds filled with exalted text and shackled limbs
Spiked parallels lacerate hills, seeking the golden coast
They manifest will and sever compromise
Axles bear fraught hope with infirm mothers
The wheels bite and scar the land that was never theirs
The prairie grass stiff with blood
Waves under Cormac McCarthy sky
Bleached horncores point northward, the only byway
We're pissing gunpowder in the valley,
Where adobe roofs shine
They're filled with blankets and nothing more
The daylight counts the coup
The evening keeps score

(2) River uncoiling like a snake
Renting canyons, arterial spray
It feeds the empire with leviathans
Teeth and trunk - thick black it flows
Villages stand empty, fettered collars march
A basket of hands on a porch, their final sign
There at the throne history's written
The palimpsest filled
But the ink runs thin, it pours down over the jewels
Victory sister's pinprick becomes a torrent
It's gushing and it flows across the royal line
The sun doesn't rises nor sets but
It's evening time

The balance sheet boils
Promissory notes stamping miles high
The winding of the watch ticks
Evening chime

(3) Empyrean fortress splits
Payload doors
Orange blossoms sing their delta blues
Charred đường children they flee
Leaving even skin
Dominos stacked against corporate dimes
One thousand clicks from the sun
It's evening time

(4) What did they see, our ancestors
Scanning the landscape
Long before the fire's light
We carve their bones from rock,
Find their blades still sharp
Where they dropped them
They left us signals,
Chalked hand on cave walls
Speak of fertile goddesses and first hunts
But we give them our own names,
And stamp their lives
Their solstice is long gone now
But the evening survives