Calchas fleece and flying cleats,
The sword or the ball or crimson leaves,
Beckoning,
A wind whispers in the ear.
Brothers will tell you to go the wrong way,
Do we play for the pawns,
Or pawn for the play?
We’ve got uniforms with numbers:
They’ve got metal armor,
What’s the difference?
They sailed ships to Lemnos,
The waves didn’t get them.
They bought condos and cars,
The game didn’t kill them.
They were brothers wandering
Blinded in the night,
They were killed in broad daylight.
The structured play,
House of cards,
Only the grave is made of stone.
No one can feel the game
When it leaves you all alone.
This is our home built out of pennies,

Paychecks mortgage buyout salary,

Contract paytime bust gametime,

Halftime hustle deal, shake hands,
It’s in we’re in they’re in the stands.
Watching waiting swords shots paper
Flying through. We’re safe.
Until the wind gets a little fiercer,
Our dollars and dimes come bustling down,
Our families naked,
Once we could pay for it,
But all we’ve got left is them.
Is that all we’ve made,
Things that’ll let us pay?
Pay whom and for what and why?
Coming in, we owe not a penny,
Coming out, we’ve always got a fine.
Time to make up for that game
We played that never really got counted for anything
After that tie,
what we called the game
In luscious uniforms,
Shining helmets, plumed feathers,
Battle shouts, golden treasures.
Somehow they were slaughtered
When he fell in love with his daughter.
Or the one he carried in his pocket,
He shuttled in his shining rocket,
Shot down the sideline in the grass.
He trusted his brother for that pass,
I told you so many times
He didn’t want you to make it but I was your brother,
Really it was me.

Once he’s been trampled under
By that piece of stone,
And earth above rent asunder
Not from below, where even thunder
Can never reach our ears.
Still the grave will have its powers,
Where we will fall and find the flowers
Have fallen from their bloom, those ships have sailed away.

The golden sun cannot repay
For that shining fleeting moment when it favored,
We savored the feeling we had won.

The moon will come to guide the way,
The lonely man will choose to stay
Or to the truth go nearer,
Where the darkness makes more shade,
And the moonlight walks much clearer.

Flat on the surface of the sea,
Reflected at the instant our eyes
Meet it, our hands reach in
To hold its unearthly
Wetness falling
As we cling to it,
Losing solid form
At our fingertips,
The work of our own hands
And more deeply shattered souls.

From the hole we’ve been digging
As we’ve been climbing, there will shine
From below and from the earth
A murky picture of ourselves.
Someone will hold it in his hands.

A farmer
Working in the fields,
Pulls down his hat to shield
His eyes from the glaring heat of sun.
Looking down,
Carefully he tends those yams
With warm assurance of nature’s bounty,
None left to doubt
That the cold will root it out,
Once the man’s hands have dug it out,
And he finds his place within the ground.

The lonely man has lost his way,
He trips and falls and finds his way,
Groping in the darkness over the earth,
Hard beneath his fingers, but if he hears,
The wind whispers in his ears,
Who can have it, all and all,
He who fulfills the promised call,
Promised then to have it all,
A promise soon fulfilled.

Then he will go, where all awaits,
And he is no more than his name,
His name still calling through the sea,
Wind rattling the surface waves.