Once Upon a Midnight Dreary While I Pondered Weak and Weary

Herr Prof. Immanuel Rath at a low point,

'Der blaue Engel,' Josef von Sternberg, 1930

It's well past midnight and two Cohen albums in,

I'm running through my hermetic wheel again.

coveting while turning pallid, feckless and flaccid.

a coveted image in hand will wear and fade,

but this icon will lie hidden

in some damp piss-soaked corner of a shadow.

"Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?

Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,

Upon thy brow in alternation play,

Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn."

misery is a veil, it's terror that's real

just sit alone with Ravel

- where "even damnation is poisoned with rainbows,"

it could be two notes on the piano and I'll smile.

still terror lurks behind us, an awful noise,

a string quartet hell-bent on twisting the gut

in the mood of savage laceration

terror inscribed on the body:

Here lies misspent toil and too much spoiling rotten sentiment.

So the still small voice let forth a lyrical refrain;

And here we are all cold and numb, are you happy that I've come?

when you fell in aching pleasure, melancholic, in earnest tether

you found your place in the chain reviled after fits of lust and guile.

Now we know which side your on, please give in to passing on.