Only Skin

Only Skin And there was a booming above you That night, black airplanes flew over the sea And they were lowing and shifting like Beached whales Shelled snails As you strained and you squinted to see The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry You froze in your sand shoal Prayed for your poor soul Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke Then there was a silence you took to mean something: Mean, run, sing For alive you will evermore be And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkinHas gone east While you're left to explain them to me Released from their hairless and blind cavalry