The Serpent

After breaking my chains and the skull of a man
 I made like a rabbit and ran
 I washed up in the fang of Nevada
 Where I went on the lam
 The sky was a mirror, the sand was a blade
 I found work in an orchard way down in a glade
 A great ouroboros burns in the sky
 An eye
 Lidless and bloodless and cold
 And as above, so below
 Life begets death begets life in an endless tableau
 From the villages and farms and rez came the men
 Dirty and poor and thin
 I shed past like skin and I left it out west
 I washed off my sins
 I reached for an apple and suffered a bite
 My senses consumed by the roar and the light
 A great ouroboros burns in the sky
 An eye
 Lidless and bloodless and cold
 And as above, so below
 Life begets death begets life in an endless tableau
 The serpent vanished in the shadows for good
 I fell where I stood
 A Hualapai spoke of a man named Coyote
 A trickster in the woods
 The others tried to quiet him, but seeing no choice
 They drug me from camp singing in a low voice