The Four Trumps of the Dakotas(Things Aren't What They Seem)

In which we learn that Ray Lahoon walks on water when crossing the frozen Missouri River on foot in an act of unique, hallucinatory penitence, abandoning his rented vehicle on highway I-94 after it runs out of gasoline and he hasn’t enough money to purchase any more. Upon crossing the river, winter melts into fall, and Lahoon must race against the melting ice or die of drowning before he is able confront his nemesis Rebel Bone and attain resolution thereby.

Part the Fourth

Mindscape
Escape
Don’t panic but
Things aren’t what they seem

Things are never what they seem
A snowflake falls from roof to floor
Blood red suddenly, then fourscore more
Making five, and five melt to three
Me oh my oh me

Things aren’t what they seem to be

Bloody fingers on my left hand
In my mind’s eye I see
Done driving, we run on fumes
These cars aren’t built to last
And neither were you

Dear

The cup
Is a triangle
Turned upside down
And one is three and three is one
When Ray Lahoon comes to town

Tripping
Over snow and field
Sliding
Down the river valley
I am coming home

A water road and snake
As far as the eyes can see
Which is quite far
When one has a diamond
Lodged within one's skull
And sees with only triads
Seeing well beyond
the two and into
the rich, ripened three

Oh me oh my oh me
The gushing upward cup
From the north down
Infinitely
Toward the south down
Infinitely
The world triangulated
Between the killer
The daughter
And we

And the fourth
Is the bone
And the fourth
Cannot bleed
Nay
The fourth
Serves to bleed
With blackhorn eyes
And darkborn sighs
The fourth
Serves just to bleed

Blood pounding
In my ears
And the freezing
Turns tragedian
Tears at my face
And snowblinds my
Tears

Here now
Slipping past bough and stone
Toward the river down below
Come I to a revelation
a revelation revealeth itself to me
my brow glows bright with heated
polyphony

and sayeth this:

Whence goeth thee
Sir
And from whence
From east to west
Or west to east
The river flows
From north to south
And changes course
Constantly

Though to eyes
It remains
A river
The river
Is not what it was
Just now
Nor will it ever again
Be

You might take this
And shake with fear
Or take it
And draw strength down
From the snowcapped
Waves
From the icy
Dredg

Rock hard sediment
Sand and stone

And beneath
The freezing
Holy water
Above
Landblown thee
Snowblown thee
Driven here by memory

This I say
And shall say
Until you resolve
Your fourfold flow:

Drum back the dead bull down
and hold down
your bitter contumely

Drum back the dead bull down
and succumb not now
to unwound memory

One is two and they are three
Ho’
The river’s flow
Will hold thee
The snow and ice –

Tread lightly

And so it is
And so I do
From east to west
Go I
Against the flowing
Northward sud

I go

Not wandering
But on a path
And mission

Here I see
The tracks of a jackrabbit
Jackrabbit tracks!

There I see
The fox’s gait
And now a deer’s
Hoofprint

These animals understand
The cold
And know
Where they might
Go

The water’s hold
Is good enough for they
So too it’s good enough
For me

A revelation revealeth itself to me
What pain I have
Might dissolve
Beneath this pink hued sky
The sun revolves around the earth
A dozen times and again
As I cross this river here

There now! Those trees
Look turn! Once gripping
Fingers turned: gray-brown
Beauties yearn

Now regrow their leaves
One at a time, a sucking pull
Upward the leaves undo
The smells that change
From snow to fall
Backward the seasons
Turn

Beneath my feet
The river twists
And I feel now
The water flow
Halfway o’er I must
Go

Running
Against
Her undertow

As the leaves
Levitate up slowly
From the unwinding
snow

Oh me
Oh my
Oh we

Read the Lyric from the Beginning