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Rozz

1.Ere the Flowers Unfold

Please come near me, will you hold me? I am leaking so very badly! Will you stop up my holes?

If your answer is, "No, I'm busy!" I will follow you out to the garden. I can smell you from three miles away!

If your answer is, "Get me dirty!" you can stop up my holes so nicely! I won't leak anymore!

But if your answer is, "No, I'm sleepy!" I will stare at your face with longing... I will chew on your face.

And then the night comes like an unfolding, unscented flower... I'll be sent away.

2.Dead Eyes Open, or,
How the Woman in the Attic Fled, Never to Return

Prelude
My eyes are arid and cold on a portrait's insides. I am time-hardened wax and I can see wide! Fungus and frost have fondled my frontside and I- Did he wonder and wander in small ages? Did he forget that I died? He's older and ugly and a beautiful baby, he's retinal mist. Far away, far away, leaning and turning, I moan and I list!

Middle
Not flying, not walking, porous, like curtains, I hang on the dampness of Spring! I've known my own scrapings for so many years, I know that something is coming! Not demon, not quickly, gradual breaking glass... My knees will go out from under me! I've borne my own weight for so many years, I know the ground is dissolving! Not under, not behind, not slow and torpid... I'm far-away attic frost, free and untangled!

Conclusion
Didn't he wonder? I shall surprise him! Did he forget? I shall remind him! Please hold my hand, beautiful, ugly man! I've come untangled, but we shall find frost again! Dizzy and turning, you never need walk! I shall carry you, hold you, early and blinded! My son is no burden, I'm ancient with sorrow strength!

3.Catacomb Kittens

One
She spent the night alone with body bruised and skirts asunder. He found his sister in the morning, soaking, in a puddle. "Let's run away," she said. "He beats us both incessantly! I know a place beneath the city where we'll stay forever lost!"

Chorus One
"I've seen the waifs emerge from the underground. They roam the catacombs and everywhere underneath... We could live secretly, away from society!"

Two
Away after sunset they tumbled through the darkened city searching for cold grates and bars agape like twisted teeth and jawbones pulled wide and cracking. Wet and talking wind forbade them! "Just shut your ears," she said. "Orphans are surrounded by these things!"

Chorus Two
"Hold my hand, I'll lead you below. We'll find an alcove and no one will know about us! We can live secretly, away from society!"

Three
They wet their tiny kitten paws on rotting rocks and water. They skinned their whiskers digging deep where darkness settles into corners and tooth-marks, sightless eyes and sunken ceilings. Sentient depths awoke and noticed them... they started screaming.

Chorus Three
"Let's hurry back," she said, "before we are swallowed! Run now, my darling child, I'll be sure to follow closely! We must hide desperately, away from monstrosities!"

Outro One
Next week, next year, there is a somebody who hears their feet underneath. They stop, and tilt, and frown... they hear them drowning! No, the wind singing just below the street...

Outro Two
"You're here with me, it's just we two. So if you've died, why, then I have, too!"

4.Speak, Marauder!

One
Pay no heed to the fool in the field so far and gray... with spies like the serpents underfoot and rodents. Legs of wood... burlap, canvas, belt and hood and screams like freezing rusty nails and stitches running through his neck.

Chorus One
There's straw in his brain and his clothing is stained with mice, small newts, and the perfectly maimed! Don't look under his hood in the place where he stood or you'll find yourself running from the rook in the wood!

Chorus Two
Wind and leaves are rustling, turning, naked branches reaching, reaching... Taunted vigil, weeping on his stick... now he's bleeding. He can hear the pest and when it's gnawing through! Rope and rowan cast him when the raven flew! He can be the darkness in the trees and feel the hollow and then frighten children far too young for this winter. He can live and breathe and die and talk again! Always in the glade where dark and chill begin!

Bridge
He stalks the patch at night and scratch... and fly!
Stepping lightly, tries so hard to stain... underneath!
And then crawls the dampened earth like fog... tasting blades!
And then falling back until he sleeps... screaming softly!

Outro
Brained and stained and perfectly maimed... under the hood where he stood in the wood... brained and stained and perfectly maimed... under the hood where he stood in the wood...

5.Mathilde in the Dirt

Beginning
She is horse-hoof dust and cloth and the lazy rays of sun will squat upon her unblinking eyes.
She moves sadly through the woods, hanging from the back of a caravan, thread and nail have caught her hand.
She relinquishes her grasp and tumbles to the earth, to the wheel ruts, a tangled heap of calico.
She sobs dryly for the girl who whispered like a leaf in the autumn-time, with winter skin and breath of clover.
Now she's all alone, immobile in the dirt and she can't change her face to greet the evening pressing, cold, around her.

Middle
And in the dark she can see new faces; silver like the dew-reflected moon... They laugh at her dress and sing like wind in the winter-time, wildflower tongues and moth-wing ears they sing:
"We have a doll from a human child! Hey, hey!
We found her floundered in the dirt! Hey, hey!
Her eyes are painted pools of water! Hey, hey!
Her skin is frost on the velvet skull of a fallen deer!"
And in the dark she can lift her head! Silver arms and hands help her dance and blink like a firefly! Underneath a bursting moon, twenty years elapse and soon the sun is up, and she is cloth: Mathilde in the dirt...

End
She would gasp in disbelief and she would bend her face with crimson smiles were it not for the daylight, were she not a pile of stuffing!
She knots her brains remembering each leap beneath the gnarled and starlit treetops, her flight through hanging willow curtains...
She wonders at the people with the caterpillar fingers and the cat-claws, the beetle wings and clothes of lichen!
But now she hears a sound, a caravan approaches and she shivers in the dust! Her girl has come to find her!
Now she's held aloft, a woman cries and dries her eyes on lost Mathilde from decades past who wandered far and wandered back!

6.Legs and Tarpaulin

One
What do we have along the lines of GHASTLY? Naught but six with their cups in the punch bowl! Truncheon-bruised and exaggerated piece-parts, moldy, motley, screeching family! With sunken chests the rotting pests are bound and wrapped in funeral garments. Dropsy, gout, and fast consumption... red and dead, they're seeping siblings!

Chorus One
"What screams from thee, we're much surprised! Calm thyself and thy leaping forehead! Stow thy scowl and bulging eyes! Royal blood should be far from frowning! We shall join thee and imbibe! We'll sit and sip from a broken skull! Hello, my dear, were you aware that your mouth stretches ear to ear?"

Two
What do we have along the lines of POISON? Naught but a barrel of the devil's own Black Strap! "One gallon each to stow in thy hold! A mulct, that's mild in nature!" "I regret that my hull is weighted! Humming stuff is the only ballast-" "Belay that noise, I've room to spare! I'll drink yours down in a draught-and-a-half!"

Chorus Two
"But wait, I've only now divined, King Pest is Timothy Hurlygurly! Stage actors have taken this, an undertaker's for their playhouse!" "Ill-bred rogue! You mock my throne! A King's decree cannot be altered! Make them thrash and drown in the October beer in yonder hog's head!"

Outro
Tarpaulin's sunk to his ears! And the tall one is thrashing about, pulling down bones from a post-mortem chandalier! One knock and dead-duke and bursting the barrel and freeing his fat friend and death to the Pests! They bend from the weight of the two royal sisters, they carry the Pest to their ship and the sea will bathe corpses... the buoyantly dead shall abound!

7.Tomb Lilies

"Please stop by, I'm still alive, though I'm missing fifty tomb lilies! (Even my sister has died.) If you see her, tell her that I'm missing fifty tomb lilies. (Several, with her, were espied.) Pulling my hair in town square, flowers for the dead scattered everywhere. (There is a mess on the cobblestones.) Three girls crawled by last week begging for marigolds. Now they've gone rotten and have sloppy bones! Down by the sea there lurks a one-eyed whore and she pokes at the corpses with sticks. She trades for delphiniums and sets them afloat where the maggots and black waters mix. My sister had soft, nervous eyes colored blue and gray. She flirted and blushed so adorably. But now if she winks it is merely the subtle movement of the decomposition of soft bodily tissues and the expression is done so most horribly!"

8.The Red and Silver Fantastique
and the Libretto of the Insipid Minstrel

One
"I drag my right arm through the sawdust... he hasn't opened his eyes in months. He was a small dog. He lost his hat and he never made a very convincing primate. I was painted red and silver. Now I'm lonely, lost my dollar, and my dog, he rots."

Two
"There were children calling my name. They spat upon my paper shoes... I touched their ice cream. I sang through cardboard. I stared at shadows. I don't know who watched... perhaps they hate me. I was painted red and silver. Now I'm ugly, lost my flower, and I'm seeing spots."