charnel house days (a free roaming meditation of medieval ghosts)

black wind in the hollows & we three are fumbling, laden but without substance; fandangos & brine for air; wretched carnal creatures dividing lust & passing through these nocturnal avenues, simpering pimp corners – our homesteads now; we rise at the foot of night and retreat on the edge of dawn & between our feet stamp/beat/cajole a rhythm for the insane, corrupting, insouciant, taking hold of the nubile (male, female, other) & run them to earth like sweating horses, corrupted skin bleeding white foam & other muscle agonies/ecstasies until released & we’ll watch them baulk for more, the rev & pump of their flesh engines, wild banners skit & flap, leaping players, card sharps there in the latent blue shade where the whispers of deathly mediocrity have dispersed, the fruitful summoned down, the tiny ivory angels coming to roost, singing in their throats, battering their wings on the doors of the houses of administration willing downfall; & on our way the smell of bodies rising from the grass blades, the tree creepers etching pretty patterns, scars of exposed sap & in there too the seeping red miasma of human blood, scorched, delineated by ages and history’s chanting, subtle vowels, the arc of a new language in the gullet straining to leap, to gather pace & value & form; we three listen like mutes, we snuck up in motley; then in the last hour are laughing, coarse, extreme; we linger at the edges no more, come down among them kissing shoulders & rallying the deviants, making merry with gods & goddesses, the rolling, writhing irony of belief laid waste, shoved into itself & replayed for the next generation; the dawn strikes the bell, the clanging gorge of metal turns the ribald asunder, the charnel house opening its mouth & spewing out ancestors for one last view, one last breath of air, green, gaseous air passing into dead lungs & escaping, hissing, from the rotten forms until they are banged up once more, returned to their depth, hidden in stone & we three, watching the shades of the living retreat, hurrying like ants, back to their homes before the day can strike them are turning once again to the place from which we came . . .