lover_man

He dreams of music. Sinking in the green, the red-rot longing of his grave-bed, he dreams. The sweet-song sliding of his lady's blood, the death curl, bubbling brown, laughing life and keening blood. Croak and scream, hunting cry, mourning calls of mist and dying. Swamp songs. And outward. Outward through the swirl of life, the fog of death, and the mortals call.

Memory, bitter-sweet, mud-fruits bursting on his tongue, and the sounds of the riverboat, the crack of whip and whirl of dance-music, laughing and chinking of glasses, the band cheerful and gaudy, haunted by screams as Les Jeunes stick rotting hands in the wheel, and drag them down. He can hear them, dream them, singing in the bayou, the band playing white and pale, old tunes and new songs, misty as the morning sun rises over the trees. Lively, dance-drowning, feet tapping to the Baron's rhythm, brassy and fierce white in the red-brown sliding, human songs a-sinking. He hears. He dreams. They sing for him, while he remembers. While he dreams.

And deeper. Music deeper than the swamp singing, than the ghosts of human songs, and the Baron dances at the crossroads, filthy grin and fire-rum, and the deep bass beat, blood-song singing, death in the laughing, life in the crying, and the throat behind the grin is screaming, and the screaming is a song, the oldest song, the most beautiful. The Baron turns, and sees him, bottle tipped in salute, shovel laid aside, and he dreams he's laughing, dreams he's singing, and the blood-beat in his head is the beat of his heart, and the life is in the dying. In the song.

Some songs is for singing. Some is for living. And the first, the last, that song is for dying.