Music spurns the existence of our fantasies, where we can become a pirate or gangster, one lone cowboy riding the range of eternity singing prairie songs. I will pretend to be the wisest, a fool, molded from the red clay of Egypt. Almost the wind wearing away the mountains and trading Prometheus for the fire he stole; beholden to Pharisaical law, the Pentateuch, or Don Quixote at the height of his quest.

In Mohamed’s coffin I will find the dagger the leads to Duncan, more than porcine and raging like the Sybarites dissolved in luxury, lost in sleep outside the woods. Will you join in, spend the day with your dreams, never cast the same shadow twice? It is a reawakening that leads to flight, swimming toward the swollen eyes of the moon, in pitch like a trumpet piercing the webs that cover the trees.

Heaven is the floor we stand on, hell a door at the other end, beyond where winter comes to freeze the ground and Cerberus barks at our arrival doubly sure we are the children of light. There is a gang of doves descending on the temple; feathers curling like fingers that will betray their course rise in one last stand against the day, refusing to surrender or hold vigil through the rain that won’t wash away the blood.