Rider

Baby's ball is all blood-red like flayed pigs
And silk soft little things
Fill a house hung from strings
And I fly out on my silver, scissoring wings
With the other sardines
Over cities of things mommies need
Light as gas, and half-assedly free
Like I was in 1993

Over the ruins like we're staggering apes
What we get is what we take
In a split open place where a man can get kinged
In a palace of panic and flames
Where nobody gets blamed
By the tired and broke down and beat
In sunken gardens where there was a street

West over water, I rambled and paced
And the blood river raced
Like the sweat down my face
And the stadium roared and the warriors embraced
And the golden shore groaned beneath the weight of my tastes
And I blazed
In the last orange hours of the day
Until the dust hazed and hid us away

So little baby, be brave
I see your dad riding over the rise
His whole cavalcade
Watch them run on all sides

And the neon white branches and the carrion fly
On a congressman's eye
I have wrapped up for you in some old autumn leaves
And left under a rock out on Rock- Rockaway Beach
Beneath the trees

I have laughed my best hiss to the whistling breeze
There's a hole in my throat
You can note my last wheeze if you need
And then take hold of the rope
And down we scream