1. White-hot white sand sun-bleached cow skull.
Water: you’d commit manslaughter for a mouthful.
No sweat left, dizzy, dying of thirst.
The sun’ll suck you dry if it doesn’t fry you first.
Trudge, stumble, fall to your hands and knees, crawl.
No one knows you’re still alive but the vultures see it all.
If you stop to rest when you can’t move another inch,
Every so often just remember to twitch, twitch.
Skin scorched burnt to a crisp cracked crimson.
Black spots encroaching on the edges of your vision.
Try to stagger back to your feet and you swoon
And topple face first down the face of a steep dune.
Stung by a scorpion, venomous snakebite.
Hour after hour after of the merciless daylight.
Your desperate pursuit of relief is fruitless.
Not a cloud in the sky, just the blazing blueness.

Chorus: Greedy, black-eyed scavengers.
From far and wide they gather.
Each calling out to claim a piece
Of this impending feast.

2. Rode your horse ‘til it collapsed and with your last bullet shot it.
And then to keep from starving ate its flesh until it rotted.
Feels like years ago, you haven’t had a bite since.
The mere fact of your survival is an act of defiance.
Even if somebody’s looking for you, they will never find you.
The oven-blast wind blows your tracks away behind you.
Your clothes are shredded, tattered rags hanging from your gaunt frame.
Wild-eyed, trying in vain to recall your name.
But of course, all the things you want to forget stay.
Your long list of afflictions can’t drive them away.
The regrets, the mistakes that led you to this moment,
Grip your mind like a vice, is this your atonement?
Grit getting in your eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and open sores.
Trying to convince yourself there’s no rescue worth hoping for.
But for some reason, you keep yourself moving.
Death keeps offering his hand and you keep refusing.

Chorus: Greedy, black-eyed scavengers.
From far and wide they gather.
Each calling out to claim a piece
Of this impending feast.

3. Starting to hallucinate, you can’t trust your eyes.
Figures moving in the clouds of dust that you recognize.
Voices murmur, but what they are saying, you cannot hear.
Sparkling streams disappear when you draw near.
In a deep daze, fever-dreamlike, colors run.
With each breath, you wonder if you’ll muster another one.
You feel chills even though the heat doesn’t abate.
Your body’s shutting down, you’re surrendering to fate.
This is where it all ends, roll onto your side.
Dry-eyed, you lie waiting for the shaking to subside.
Eventually it does and then everything is calm.
A crow lands close by, pecks you in the palm.
Another follows suit, but this one is bolder.
It prods you in the neck while it perches on your shoulder.
The voices growing louder, you can almost comprehend.
The crows squawk and take off, the voices tell you, “This is not the end.”

Chorus: Greedy, black-eyed scavengers.
From far and wide they gather.
Each calling out to claim a piece
Of this impending feast.