Song Titles

Lilies on the sloping golden bank

Drop their petals in the muddy stream

Where twenty ill-formed and ill-fated sank

And float back, bloated, yellow, and unseen.

The petals stick to ropey brass-blonde hair,

To open, bloodless wounds like swollen starbursts

And lips that breathe the most miasmic air:

Ships too infected to come back to harbour.

The river carries our girls down to Boston

Their bodies oozing with the memory:

How close we came to God, and how we lost them,

And then their corpses are swept out to sea.

They sink, their bones are picked, and they can tell you

We all live, and then we all die, yellow.

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