Let

by Dan Holloway

Let me go
Down below
Where the future hangs low
Like a black moon throwing blacker shadows over bloodied snow
Where our slideshow
Slowly winds towards today
Let me replay the moments when you prayed
Let me go

Let me go
To rhyme with holy fools
Whose only rule of poetry is flow
Where verse is free
And wordsmiths badder than the worst of me
Where churches break their idols on the spines of misfits
Where mystics search for final truths
And the red-eyed and the sleep-deprived cut tracks in vinyl booths
And grey-bearded visionaries spit Burroughs on the shrine of youth

Let me go
Wide-eyed where dragons rage and rappers rave
And let them slay my innocence
And draw my blood
And let them flood my senses
With the sweet perfume of pain
With tastes that drain the feeling from my face,
Erasing every memory with outlines traced in ecstasy
And lace my veins with the sensation of a
Thousand butterflies emerging to embrace their only day.

Let me go
To suck the sacred poison from intoxicated skies
Philosophise with rent boys
High five the hell-bent and the heaven-sent
And stent the city’s arteries
With sycophantic merengues to the high priests of the moshpit
And wash the slack-skinned strippers
With oils and scents and the unspent dreams of the departed.

Let me go
Down below
Where the future hangs low
And your heart’s so full of junk that it bleeds brown upon the snow
I will hold the shell that’s slowly growing cold
That sheds the soul refusing to grow old
Expelling prayers through staring eyes
Whose fires are darkening to coals
Like two black moons
Throwing blacker shadows on the bloodied snow
That whisper
Let me go

Published with permission from Dan's forthcoming  CD and pamphlet "Last Man Out of Eden"