The Land of Twice-Sleep

There really was no land at all Up here, most men would really fall Because they save no breath to keep Demons from invading sleep The city in the sky burned bright Burned fervently with ghostly light Because their statues lay in waste The gods before them ran in haste The city gate where earth and fire Coalesced, a steaming pyre Because the head of Hercules Two lifeless eyes and broken knees His father Zeus, who saw his son Lying by the sky-road, alone Because his anger could not vent The kingdom’s end was never met I, the soul who dreamed it so My shadow over marble low And darkness cast there to preside My pale complexion could not hide I only meant to soft-enquire The how and why of faint-inspire Where towers black and white must rise Then tumble down to synchronize I’m waiting for the freezing cold The leaves of autumn, buried, sold It came without any season And terrorized winter’s reason Because the sun refused to shine The snowy sky-like foamy brine As I leaped, and looked on with thought Mad laughter choked with tears and snot Because the world was out of breath Despite it's always dodging death When I fell back to God’s terrain The tender dream’s revealing stain Because the earth could never know Paradise’s blazing show I tried to write the story here With curiosity and fear Because I felt, that we should go At least one time, to hell below Where in our dreams, the fever’d show With ventral source and gushing flow The heat became my passionlust It charred the dirt, and smoked the dust My wonder turned to troubled awe When I remembered what I saw: Marble heads with opened maw, Broken limbs disfigured from, Bodies whole departed the sum, Cindered trees on mountain slopes, Raggedy flags across torn ropes, Cloth now used to tent the dead, Life and poverty now wed. Desperately, I tried to find Some solace for my troubled mind Because this void was soon to close While still the fabled godhead chose The coronation in decay And ghosts in chains were led away Dark-woods may keep the tales at bay Because there is no wind today And colors fade, from blue to gray Shrines will frost in carved dismay The sky, a painted torrid fray Because the land slept twice in May