The Hand Of John Kemble - Penal Colony

Followed it down to the reliquary

The last few of pocked knee

Had a vision: delerium tremens

In the throes of summerland

There were rings on every finger

Courted pagans there on Easter

Swallowed it down, the boiled hare

Lazy-eyed men say they’ve seen it;

Wrest the gim crack

From so many trinkets

Sermons tangled in chicken wire

Waterproofed with hot tar

And time folded over

Stood in, front, ensconced;

No one to set off the defensives

By the hand of John Kemble

We wished our wishes

Chants that went sideways

Drank our super-ego

By the hand of John Kemble

And temptations before us

Fell under John’s famine

Laid to waste like Faust

Frankenscense traded

For the hand

Gold fever wished upon it

Sworn to nature

And the elements

Somnabulism nausea

Came from my scrap metal

Followed it to the terminal

Dressed walk window’s coin

Operated inferno

Sent back

By telekinesis

To the center

Of Egypt

Grift as the

Last train wreck

From the carny’s possession

Pendulums whistle the bomb song

By the hand of John Kemble

We wished our wishes

Chants that went sideways

Drank our super-ego

By the hand of John Kemble

And temptations before us

Fell under John’s famine

Laid to waste like Faust

Dripped from a sky falling

Shone the hand’s ring like a shiner;

Eyes turned to marble

There, we marched with the triad

In the riot boot borrowed

Catholics sent the missionaries

Easter rites behind them

His hand, there it went

From Göslar to The Keys

Whole tribes

Came back from the dead

Dressed in chicken blood

Waiting for Nöel

Black pine for the hanging

By the hand of John Kemble

We wished our wishes

Chants that went sideways

Drank our super-ego

By the hand of John Kemble

And temptations before us

Fell under John’s famine

Laid to waste like Faust