Field Commander William, he was our most important spy.
Wounded in the line of duty,
parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties,
urging Fidel Castro to abandon fields and castles.

*Toronto was very much you. Lovely streets, many people to save and demons to slay and a breath of manufactured hope that tells me all about the pain that you feel that I cannot.*

Leave it all and like a man,
come back to nothing special,
such as waiting rooms and ticket lines,
silver bullet suicides,
and messianic ocean tides,
and racial roller-coaster rides
and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry.

*This place, however, is me. Wild, rough. I've seen the pictures that say how lovely it is in the summer, when life flows fertile. I say it's perfect now, in the coldest part of winter, the bitch of winter screaming out her scorned-woman hatred. She tells me I am hers, I belong in her womb with the other wretched, capering, madly dancing damned souls.*

I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life's been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.

*Here needs you too, though. Devils from hell and demons from heaven fight and quarrel here just as they do in Los Angeles where the weather is deceptive. Here, here is truth. Care, they do not, the locals. Their love is cold and mortal, leaving with the toss of a leaf on the wind and it is obvious. Always obvious. Just as the cold. And the frozen water, lying upon the fallow ground. Cold. Hard. Sleeping until someone with a warmer heart than I comes to tell it to rise. Come, order this land into being.*

I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with the poor.
But then I overheard your prayer,
that you be this and nothing more
than just some grateful faithful woman's favourite singing millionaire,
the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair,
working for the Yankee Dollar.

*You said I was shallow, said I chased only my own pleasure. Well, you can see right through me now. Look, please, and tell me what you see. I see nothing when I look, you know. Nothing. Put something in the blank that is my heart. At least give back what I gave you if you don't need it anymore. Please, Angel, Angelus, Liam, whatever you call yourself today, let me go, cut me loose. Please, for the sake of all the gods vampires aren't supposed to believe in, give me freedom. I can't even kill myself.*

Ah, lover come and lie with me, if my lover is who you are,
and be your sweetest self awhile until I ask for more, my child.
Then let the other selves be wrong, yeah, let them manifest and come
till every taste is on the tongue,
till love is pierced and love is hung,
and every kind of freedom done, then oh,
oh my love, oh my love, oh my love.

*You do not have to take me upon the altar of your lust; I do not ask that much. Let me be the altar, I will take any rag unto me you give. Bless me, even if it is with nothing but your disdain and your hatred. Tell me you think of me, you remember the abortion that is your youngest childe, the horror and the beast that is this your last creation, your lowliest, the worm underneath your boot. Can't you see? Please, Angel, please my Father my Lover my Sire my God my Everything--*