The Black Maria

With a diamond for your eye
You surely have second sight
And Seconds surely have
Precedence before all Firsts
Inasmuch as now
The First are gone

Rotten gone
Blonds gone

Smiling
Dawns gone

All glistening, crystalline
Bombshell song
No room for a sour note
Or a sour smile
No! No room for honesty or truth or just plain civility

A sour smile devours here
A sour smile scorns

Fakes
Let me tell you
The fakes get the most done

but

Let not the bastards drag you down, it’s said
Illegitimi non carborundum est
And I say:
The bastards are a test!
The bastards are a test!

Why are they all so rich?
Oh! And the rest of us
a poor dumb bitch
asleep
dreaming
“game”
hungry pedants
answering questions
but meaning nothing

All I want is FAME!
All we want is FAME!

Yes. Yes.
We all want the same.

Mine I will attain
With a knife
To the jugular
Of a name

And a bullet
To the apple
of a memory
that’s my bane

Clout, that’s it! Base the cravings
Of hunger here
Salami meat
And the slowburn
Dawn a-rising

Yawn

“I am the Black Maria.
I am the Black Maria come.”

There, sleeping next to me
Remember, folks,
This bus ride will never end

A girl
A woman
Drawn up against the pane
A little drool slipping, wan

Yet she speaks!
How she speaks! A voice russet
Her voice
All
Falling leaves

Beams dropping on red Russia
Forget-me-not Revolutions
In her words and tones
And Africa
Demanding

Westward medicines

Oh fuck we are all to blame

You must understand
She speaks in her sleep
And I hear her
As she speaks:

“I am the Black Maria
Come to take your day.”

Lo’, yeah. The sun is rising.

“…”

Silence.

I open with a joke:

How do you know the floor of your band's rehearsal room is flat?

“…”

Because the drummers are drooling out of both sides of their mouths.

Zing.

“…”

Don’t you get it?

“I am the Black Maria
Born of the summer dawn and”

You don’t get it.

“sewn, revenant I am
And so more than a memory.
Reach out and touch me
and your fingers vanish into the mist
my finery
garbs just scraps
and shadows
I am an untouchable
And not allowed me even lust
I am not a memory of your daughter
I am more
But just as much
Yes I am the Black Maria
Snowbound sorceress
Asleep in the summer heat
Asleep in the summer heat”

Soon we will be in Albany.

Soon we will be there.

Oh there she goes.

A quick stop and
gone.

And north of there a lake
And west of there a cabin
And west further
The corpse of a
Dead dead buffalo

You know
Tell me you don’t know.

“I know not.
I do not know.”

What good then are you?

“Oh right good am I
And well even
I am.
I know the place
Where lived the Rebel Bone
Locked horns he with the Sorceror.
Leapt they
into the gloam.

Yes, right good I am.
For I am almost home.”

Take me there then.
Once woken.
I’ll shake you. Here.
We’ve passed Albany.

“It’s westward we will go.”

The wheels turn
Pitiful
Rubber on the road
Chemicals
And stone
The wheels turn

While the Black Maria sleeps
and I drift, anchorless
to dream of
finding
to dream of
killing

that enemy our Rebel Bone

Read the Lyric from the Beginning