My bed becomes Atlanta burned down; with your touch, I fall inward as I frailly reach out -- the little hairs on my hand singed. Should I mourn for you, your loss from my Kingdom of God? The fundamental separation: man from beast or beast from man -- whatever the filthy Vulgar has invented for a rallying cry of superiority -- as for me, I say let Hell take them all and you too; I know your name. My room grows cold like a New England winter -- I left my soul there, after all, haunting the Providence bone-yards and Brown, that chilling silence I know so well -- with you in my arms, back again in the cursed Midwest where God cried out rain, the same you, different name: the Damned who stalk the walks of us who bear the Mark of Cain. Proudly, proudly I say. Had you been born an English girl, would you stand closer to Heaven, could I reach you through those thick clouds? You were born American into democracy and decadence. yes, decadence -- do all ages not view their fathers as saints and themselves as stained -- and the tyranny of mob-rule. But had you come from across the sea your malady would be the same anyway, the adherence to destiny and acceptance of death before the becoming. Perhaps if you had come from South Station, free-willed and obscene, but not vulgar, I could feel you, I could sense it in your bones. copyright 2001, 2002