In the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada the Manson family made its final stand

In the Panamint Valley, Lucy, Charlie, and Sally watched the rangers climb the canyon while they boarded up the ranch

Now Chuck, he hid his body in a vanity in the girls' room

While Lucy spraypainted paintings hanging in the air

And Sally got the rifle with the bullets they'd been saving

And shouted to the sheriff that he damn well better beware

The way the colors hung in the sunlight choked Sally's lungs and stung her eyes, and she saw blurred in the floating haze, in a delicate vase, a single flower

While she fixed upon it, a bullet breached her bonnet

Sharp and sirening colors mixed into her morningbloom vision

A too-bright light casting a shadow across a statue to the bower

It seemed to Sally that a solemn-faced legion of conscripts drug from graves was marching up from hell's prison

She cackled to the posse "Come, man, to meet thy doom!", then she noticed her bonnet on the floor with a piece of her ear stuck to it and she decided to strike a match to the curtains of the room

Turning to the window, Sally saw the grey men below

Held the gaze of a nervous lad and glad of her tidings to his foolish heart she set the house to ruin deftly, grinning at the kid with what of her mouth was left

Lucy saw Sally's brains burst through the shimmer of glinting paint droplets she was watching form and transform into a thousand of the windward valleys the mountains love dearer, each a home to a family singing, as they labored through the days, songs with love and sorrow embracing ever realer into life

She watched the pieces of her estranged personfriend hurtle through a hearthglown paintfamily's dinner at the table, the old man speaking the Grace as a chunk of matter scattered the fumes he knew to be his little one's cradle, and his wife

Lucy hit the button on the can, and watched the mist reveal another woman, child, and man, soon to be another strife

She was now aware of, shining through the haze, a mightier world in its revealing

Sally's curtain fire was spitting flames into the ceiling

What's that? A man, a figure in the fire, flung a hand to the idly spraying can, which ate the devil greedily

And Lucy's hand was off her speedily

Charlie shook behind the little flower-covered door

His knees ridiculously close to his eyeballs

The faintly smelling smoke which reached into his cabinet was soon followed by the snap and scream of an exploding aerosol can in a hand now quite poor to look at

And really, he was growing a bit bored, squeezed into a tiny space with nothing but bottles of sodium laureth sulfates and propylene glycols to look at

So he bolted through the bathroom window saying prayers in backwards english for all the spirits of, and soon to be committed to, the house

He called down rain upon the valley

Thought to climb a tree to dwell among the clouds, perhaps befriend an Eagle or a Mouse

Listened to Lucy calling out to Sally

Now the sheriff's ashen lad sees Manson on his knees and chanting

Eyes uncorked and seeming to spill soul or sweat or semen down his cracking cheek

Jaw like a jackhammer pounding teeth to crumbles in his ranting

The kid says, "good God what a dear week I have had-o."

In the rain shadow

of the Sierra Nevad-o

(an historical confabulation)