The bell and the strings gather their armour
"Fight," they roar, and the strings fade away
But the bell keeps shrieking
A formidable banshee in red and black
Tearing my hair and ears apart with her cracking talons
Like an eagle

The one outside my door is especially
Persistent
She wants my flesh, she wants my flesh

She digs her beak in the back of my head
And with her thunderous black wings swipes away
Derailing any trains of thought
Crunching them swiftly and sharply

For moons she howls outside
Trilling, her universal cry
For loneliness, for liberty, for respect
For sisterhood

For moons she screams outside
Her gullet battered, her ears torn
Mutilating the world that turned its back on her

The ugly, the cheap, the dead
Writhing in cords and threads

The bell is everlasting, it goes on and on
More insistent than the longest string
Or the longest chord
Picketing with the sharpest fences
Its white revelry
Brings the living to their knees.