Tortoises All The Way Down

Watchmen w/ their eyes closed, ransom and a scripture by the picture of your face

Messages the rhymes chose, blueprint for contrition in a cigarette case

Everybody knows, son

Everybody knows what you’ve done

Everybody knows, son

Everybody knows exactly what you’ve done

Charles was alive then, towering like a mountain at the silver trumpet blast

William still alive till when our altars are all emptied of his offerings to the last

Everybody knows, son

Everybody knows just what you’ve done

Everybody knows, son

And so again it goes you can’t end what you’ve begun

Surely as the sun early on the east side comes

Before my sleepless eyes your features metamorphosize

Surely as the sun early on the east side comes

If only you had known how soon you’d be on your own

How suddenly they’d cast the stone

When the mouths of praise and blame start to sound the same

And you’ve asked they please not come back around

& yet they happen by, you can offer my reply:

“there’s tortoises all the way down.”

Since the night you came dressed up in your righteous name

All you claim to see doesn’t mean a thing to me

Surely as the sun early on the east side comes

I know I’m not the only one

Whose blindfold-and-a-scale-ship refused to sail

And yet failed since each search for solid ground

You sing to me at night as the moving finger writes

On tortoises all the way down

You think that glass of wine could cancel half a line?

But it won’t wash our words out this time

& I’m not the only one who’s got nowhere to run

Cause everybody knows, son

Everybody knows just what you’ve done

Everybody knows, son

Everybody knows what you’ve done

While all hiding inside our painting-of-a-house-hung-up-inside- that same-painted-house-which-ever-implies-another-painted-house-inside lives

Serpent-in-the-sky-lives!

Servants-of-the-least-high!

Most-tortoiseless lives!

Would you meet me sometime soon, son, down by the riverside?

There’s room enough in my paradise

My empty little mind