Month: November 2016

Prey Tell

What is it that keeps

your heart in chains

of darkness, graves,

voids, abysses,

and things

that cut and kill and burn?

 

Do not your

sleep-filled eyes

behold the sun?

the clouds?

the stars?

 

What calls your mind

to embrace

the gibbering shadows

that dance in

ever-tightening circles,

venturing up

to block your view of heaven,

laying waste to your

body and mind?

 

Yet in you

is the seed of song,

of love,

creativity.

 

Work the fire.

Forge the axe

that sunders darkness

with light

and sets you free.

 

Prey,

tell us you

are game.

 

 

Midnight Confessions

I pour the blood

from my heart

 

This ink

This lead

These pixels

 

Resurrected in

the empty church

of my life

 

Briefly seen,

my life imagined

as I once saw it

 

Fleeting

the feelings

of my flesh,

the senses of

my being

 

I kneel

in the empty, fragrant

darkness

 

The small wooden window

that leads to where I toss my sins

like wedding rice

never opens

 

I say them

all the same

 

They pile

like decaying petals

at my feet

 

multi-hued

multi-faceted

radiant with putrescence

 

They smell of illicit love

drunken torture

anger and loneliness

rage and despair

 

I press them to my heart

to stop the bleeding

absolving myself

resolving never to do

these things again

 

 

And so the risen sun

forgives me

 

But I have chosen death.

Song of Sacrifice 2

You hold the knife

as one holds

a fallen fledgling,

Your eyes command my approach,

and as I shuffle,

the shackles sing a

discordant, jangling dirge

 

I weep,

but whether for my soul

or for your cruelty,

I cannot say.

 

I held you.

Kissed you.

Loved you.

Sang you to sleep in my arms.

 

Your smile transfixed me,

and the hidden coils of your flesh

felt warm in my hands.

 

Your lying mouth

wrought cries from the core of me.

And like fresh clay

you molded me into a sacrifice,

 

Sharpened your knife

on your heart of stone.

 

Pray make it quick, love.

I will wait for you

in the

frozen abyss…

Poet of Light

The beacon skims

the waves

but no ships sail

this hour of night

 

A false dawn lights

the horizon, and

obsidian skies blush pale

as the stars shine

their last

 

My small lantern

battles

what shadows it can tame.

The rest wait their turn

 

The mulled wine

warms the bones

and softens the edges

of harsh memories

 

My breathing,

the scratch of the pen,

the sizzling pop of an oil bubble

sound all the louder

at this hour

 

Far below,

waves whisper

susurrations

of sighs

 

The keepers of

the past

watch from

realms unseen,

but whether in

approval or censure,

I can’t tell.

 

Either way,

I’m undone.

 

A red gold band

of light

sears the seam of

the horizon

 

I finish the wine.

I finish the page,

and close my eyes

to the sweet brightness

 

And once more

the walls crumble

to ruin,

the light

dies,

and I fade

like the names

of lovers

drawn in the sand

before high tide.

 

 

 

Poet of Shadow

I write

in the

shadowed places

 

cold, bleak

and dark

 

Stepping on cracks in the sidewalk

full of cigarette butts,

phlegmatic spit

and on occasion,

blood

 

There are crevices

in the fences too,

where the wind whistles

off key,

enticing me

to emerge

and share.

 

And I want to,

I so very want to,

and know that I

so very

never will

 

The silent shadows

comfort me,

drape their darkness

across my shoulders

like the powerful arm

of a strong friend

 

I shift and settle,

a  bag of  garbage

kicked in the corner,

under a wedge of dim, flickering light

from a faulty streetlamp,

the wires humming in

off key harmony

with the whistling wind

 

Come out to play, poet…

 

‘No,’ I reply to the invitation,

now no longer content to be in

the shadows.

I melt into them.

 

My words spin

out and away,

beyond my control,

into the vast, black

void of heaven.

 

And I write

in the

shadowed places