Only Everything Below

both butterflies and dragonflies have wings like when you sing i swear you hit two different notes but they don't harmonize as clean as when you speak there is a rhythm in the scraping of your tongue along your teeth that comes across as well as hell inside of heaven in a feast of flies and anything with wings that tries to sing but where you ripped two different holes, see, they don't cauterize as cleanly as you think and if you listen to the rhythm in your sleep you can hear me, speaking, "you are a wolf to me."

don't believe your ears nor trust your mouth
i think that every feeble doubt-soaked promise of trust
had a mind to leave you out in the rain
with your hands to the train tracks,
pulling the ropes with your teeth but you're too weak
and you're too tired, child,
lay down--i will tear every ghost from your dream

(oh king, you've stepped on the wrong crack)

rejoice! it is beating still
still strong. still thundering onward.
it turns it's palm up, lifts it's voice up, speaks, says,
"i don't know."

he speaks with the speed in the clench of a bear trap,
softly rebuilding the castles he'd kept. says,
"there is grace in a steeple collapsing."
straightens the sheets on the bed where they'd slept
thinking his love was as passive as flowers
planted in a garden of lies in her chest
says, "there is grace in a steeple collapsing"
pointing the calm in his eyes to the west.
to valinor! where love was sent on airplane wings
to shake and be shaken.
still, the flowers open as she passes, and the birds they sing to greet her
though she heaves blood.
though she heaves blood.
though she heaves blood.
though she -
though she -
though she heaves blood!

there is grace in a steeple collapsing!
there is grace in a steeple collapsing!
oh, there is grace in a steeple collapsing!
there is grace in a steeple collapsed.
collapsing!
collapsing!
there is grace in a steeple collapsing.
there is grace in a steeple collapsing.

and he said "boy get your things together,
make them wood and make them stone,
and we'll build you a house.
there isn't ever any shelter anymore."