The Nation of Spice

From phantom cathedrals their voices emerge

Rousing the aether with some primal urge

Five graven ladies who lay down the track

Fly casting romance, their guns on a rack

I could sever my holdings and never think twice

For love is not proud in the nation of spice.

I lace up my shoes with the chords of Queen Mob

Dreaming of wealth but I can’t find a job

Every adventure brings me back to here

There’s no guide or method, no starlight to steer

I’ve always relied on the cards and the dice

Riding the rails in the nation of spice.

I met a mean woman who had jealous rage

The next one imprisoned me down in a cage

Another encouraged my folly with song

Is there any moment when nothing goes wrong?

Their fatal allure is so fine and precise

And better than thine in the nation of spice.

My own patron saint has left me to my fate

And even the swap meets are folding of late

Whenever we bartered the ring of discord

Was thrown into question, despised or adored

I called an old lover, I need some advice

A desperate man in the nation of spice.

I couldn’t speak plainly, I had to elide

The facts on the ground that might injure my pride

In hurricane season an earthquake struck

It scrambled my pieces and taught me to duck

These virtuous maidens play cats to our mice

Chance, fate, and queens in the nation of spice.

We somehow survived but were never the same

Each face was drawn by a girl with no name

Last night I remembered an old magazine

A torn photograph and the words in between

She thinks it’s all pointless, an empty device

But everything rhymes in the nation of spice.

I tallied the monsters coming my way

Barely had time to clasp hands and pray

Each time she loves me I find it absurd

She loaned me her graces, I gave her my word

It takes little more than some hope to entice

Those still alive in the nation of spice.

Out in the cold he thought she was all thumbs

Her lilt will remind him what this way comes

And then for her next trick she sings him to sleep

A heaven to hold and his soul to keep

At sunrise a jacket was found on the ice

One short sleep past in the nation of spice.

The aprons chose dance, the world’s falling down

Her door knob is broken, the boys are in town

So make our amends and forgive us our debt

Spend our doubloons, smoke our last cigarette

I’m free as a bird, just a small sacrifice

Then carry me home from the nation of spice.