Rood Boy Blues -

Symbols lingering in the sutures

Where I’ve stitched our lives together

Your body figures in my future

With a boa’s tender tether

I’ve got a love to shelter us

Like a flesh and bone umbrella

A holy home

Hewn in stone

Sanctified and hallowed

Well, you know that deed

Will be deemed undue

When they pry my cold dead hands off you

Nimble fingers stroll your velvet cheeks

A tear appears and travels

Well, I’ve scoped the scape

And I will not speak

While brittle ties unravel

Well, I got a love like a carnal cope

A sanguine shrine, a boney tope

But I see the ciphers

In your eyes

Like hungry hempen collars

Well, you’ll know you’re free

You’ll know we’re through

When they pry my cold dead hands off you

My hands

Can’t set you free

O, they cleave to thee

O, they fall to atrophy

My hands

Have two holes that sing

When I clench the rings

Where I wore the rood of love

No agency, no measure

Could lessen love’s great torture

But with my hands upon this treasure

Death itself becomes conjecture