My First Kiss at the Public Execution - Live - Reading Festival 2005

The carnival's glossy ghosts
zebra-painted horses parade
the cotton candy prostitutes
caramel apple corpses singing:
"Just this way to the neon orange gallows!
Tonight we tie the noose around the killer's collar!
Watch him play his wind pipe organ!"

Just five dollars to see a face
explode, to see a man strung up by his throat.
Come one! Come all!
If you look close enough
you'll see death's machinery exposed.

So won't you hold me closer
just one more minute
until the executions over?
just one more minute
Won't you behead another
c'mon we're waiting
won't you shock and entertain us?

The hangman selling tickets to the sparkling death scene.
Tonight we watch the rope choke a conscience clean.
See it up close, see it in person!

His lips spun like revolving fun house
doors as the hush kisses at our neck nape.

"Any final words for your loving audience?"
says the man with the dazzling sapphire cape.

So won't you hold me closer
just one more minute
until the executions over?
just one more minute
Won't you behead another
c'mon we're waiting
Won't you shock and entertain us?

Until the end of the world?

Snap, snap, snap goes the neck.
"Rah, rah, rah!" the audience.
Black, black, black goes his face.
The sky spreads like thighs inside lace.