Monday, August 14, 2017

White Washed Tombs



I've lived in a graveyard,
in a country that's hot.
The tombs are painted pretty
like a candy shop.
I met a woman who told me she Cared,
about places where kids lived with dirt in their hair.
But you know I think she was sad and couldn't stop;
since she'd murdered her baby at the Happiness Shop,
It's where they sell you your youth back at the price of your heart;
So she held up her sign, to cover the rot.
I've talked with a man just a bit too angry for me,
he was raging about sins he'd never achieved.
Boy, he was on fire about another man's hell,
I couldn't get close, but even then I could tell;
 he was afraid of his silence, and what it would say
if he gave it a moment to kneel down and pray
If he just stopped for one second from yelling to breathe,
we'd all hear the quiet where his heart used to beat.
Well I was pretty pissed with the tombs
I figured they ruined the world,
still I didn't want the streets to have more folks like me;
cos I was broken and rotting and ugly to see.
I was corpse with a stomach that was turned in disgust
at the white washed walls hiding bones turned to dust.
But one day in the graveyard a Live Man appeared,
he was human and hungry with dirt in his beard.
"Tell me," I asked him, while I rattled my bones "have you come to seal me in a tomb with a stone?"
For darkness was what I wanted, and it was where I'd end up;
laid out in silence and consumed by the rust.
"Answer me, Live Man!" I begged through my teeth "what is it like to feel hunger or bleed?"
"Do you thirst?" He asked, and my anger was spent; for I had been dead for so long I'd forgot what that meant. Of all the corpses that rotted I was the worst; for I knew I was broken but I'd forgot how to thirst.
"Live Man," I rattled, shaking my bones "I am not worthy for you to stand in my home. You are Forever, and I am undone. I will crumble and perish far from the sun."

"Tell me," he said, as he stretched out one arm "can these cold dead bodies ever be warm?"
The clouds rolled away and a wind started to blow. But I said only in a whisper:
"Lord, you know."

"Look around you," cried the Live Man, as the winds began to moan, "can I raise up my children, and put flesh on their bones?"
I covered my face and spoke real slow: "Oh God, you know."
The Live Man bent down and whispered in my ear: "I am willing, be healed."
He took me by the hands where only bones should have been; There was blood from his wrists and it washed me clean, he put a heart in my chest, and when he opened my eyes:
All around me were people, real live people.
 Wearing the clothes that the Live Man had brought.
 I looked at each neighbor and I didn't know what to say:
The stone on each tomb had been rolled away.
 

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