The Garden of the Emperor

Pray permit me to set the scene
to remise my words and renew
again for thee, mysterious listeners
with soft worldly ears to this, my mystery
Trust I do speak true

And you, who art thou
that you should listen so well?
Well listen that you might glean
the base beneath a Rebel Bone
one so mean as me
and one so damned unclean
and simple, and sharp, and desirous
obscene oh! one so far from home
to come now, to fall, and falling
even more confused be

One as torn as me
from One born Two
and Two born Three
and from thence
the waking world
all listeners
the Kings and Queens
might yet arise to be

For I have not one memory
now of what came before he
my Twist Brother the “Drunken Fool,” nor before
the Factory’s Book-Armed Marms,
the Doughy Men Homonculi, the Sorcerer King
and all that has made this story turn and breathe
Believe me and make me real!
In me you must believe!

No memory before that strange sweet
crouching beside the flame
that call to aged sacrifice
that drumming down so plain
that smoke, and throbbing roar of sun bleached bones
and so then: what then is there left of me?
Who are we that have known no home?
Who are we with no memories
to call and name our own?

For are we not merely recollections
collected and amassed in skin
and losing them, what then
what then, I repeat: what remains?
Mere listening shells, and when we refuse
Even that intake, then we stand and bring

Rebellion! Adhaero! My will I shall defend!
And so in that I am something still
a majestic principal on fire, a brother-killer
rolling now in the sky, roiling magnificent and dire
in looking-glass flames I am attired
and so well dressed descend

I fall for long long hours, like one
well drugged by tiny caps
like one eating a calming slug,
yellow and smoky like a dragon’s
kiss, a measured paper’s hug and poem
I fall until I fly
and flying I rage and flap
and storm

All stars are in my eyes
And all the eyes now
belong to me and mine
We are now like the heralded angels
winged, beautiful, refined
Like songs so well sung
they blind
And wants so pure
they ring, resounding always!
they ring, they ring and sternward they climb!

Here, west and down beneath the
glass and gaudy edifice
I am the Thunderbird
called JoJo
Here, in the sky
all gloamed bring I storms and fits
beneath and above the factory
that casts its reddish hue
all glass and gaseous residue
I am that myth come true
I am the end of it

And storming
I war
And warring
I peck out my brother’s eye
no battle needed; no fight

stunned

He screams. He sighs. He fades. He dies.
The Prison Glass, having shattered,
becomes my blade and
my tongue a dial, telling the time:
the Final Hour, when one
is all, and all Sad Kings are hung
Queen Bees, once stinging, are stung
and Lovers are made sublime
diamonds
Kings and Queens all reborn
remembering they their ancient forms

How the sun gleams white below us:
my brother’s death has brought the day!
Cascades he, this subverse sun, over my long intent:
this my blade, my brother’s doom,
tastes blood, and on the blood it lays
In his throat it shall reside
Forever, until his subterranean sun
doth cease to shine
and his bones, to ash, recline

And tumbling away
from my cut and slay
I turn round again
I fall and falling, climb
ascend down into a canopy
of trees as green as limes
as old as time –

I fall up into the Emperor’s Garden
where the Woodsman dwells
cutting away all that is unnecessary
and holding back the world’s wide swell

He needs must know I am coming,
and so I deign to yell:

Opine again! Renuntio! Sing of this moment’s time!
Do you not hear the clucking violins of battle,
the sweet sage smell of promised conquest?
The drums of a dead dogs dying
and the black hearted cello of the Left Hand Path?

I seek the Maid
and as surely as I lay once
beside that firstborn fire
so surely she will be mine
as before she once was

My memory returned! As singular as the sky
One thing recalled, more surely will cascade:
a girl with a blaze of blue hair,
a vision aloft in the air before me
the Diamond Maid was mine
and so the Twin needs must have died
for I
could never share her
for I
am a jealous bird
for her
I will and dare
for her
I’ll kill all care
in her
I fear no Emperor

Hear, then, these silent notes
sucking themselves from the air
in drops of brother’s blood
in his death: I kill despair
and fear too kill I
and listen to the sucking sound
the weight of these noteless tones!

You Working Trees beside me, I call you too:
sing of sweat
sap, and toil,
sing of sugary beats
and dreams – of pine scent and wings,
of towering beams, thou wordless sing, and I know
passing you, a windy terror,
that you too have souls
you too have known the Emperor
you too have seen the Kings

So my yell complete
I tumble and I fall
A pain upon my trenched brow
I fall, and the sky does swell
till finally up above me
are the plenitude of trees, bearing down
upon the sky beneath them
no roots
rootless they reside

I stand upon the sky
and they
they look down
hazardous they frown
up there inside the smoking gloam

They, the Woodsman’s
ancient home

Quercetum it is called
The Trees
so make it known

At long last this is
Quercetum, the Place of Cutting,
you have finally found

and the Woodsman will hunt you down
Caveat! Caveat!
lay down your blade and plow
for the Woodsman is coming now
As you have come to reap
the Woodsman is come to sew

Read the Lyric from the Beginning