There is always mystery that abounds

When she walks

Her light footsteps are

Shrouded in a forlorn mist

Her shoulders hunched

In resignation of her doomed fate

Raindrops hasten from her mournful eyes

Striking the earth with cataclysmic force

Marking her the harbinger of death.

 

Wherever she goes

Her companions Grief, Pain & Despair follow

Gleefully upending souls from carnal abodes

Sensing their impending demise

She leaves no corner of the world

Untouched, no human immune

To her bloodcurdling call

Nor does she fade

Away with Time.

 

It is said,

She emerges from the shadows

Gliding silently along

Clinical hospital corridors

Drawn to

The scent of decay

She is as a moth to a flame

Materializing at the beds

Of flickering youth

Whose lives have unexpectedly

Changed course

And of those ancient in years

Whose skins wither

Becoming shriveled prunes

In the pediatric ward

A girl is on her death bed

Damned by slit wrists & an overdose of pills

Her bones jutting out

From months of self-induced starvation

In the geriatric ward

An elderly man wheezes from lungs

Blackened by years of smoking cigarettes

Inside a room at the end of the corridor

A young boy barely moves

With organs bleeding

The result of a car collision fueled by alcohol

Whether from disease, accident or bloodshed

The outcome remains the same.

 

In times of war

She descends from

The crimson sky

To witness

As green men and machines annihilate 

Both soldier and civilian

Armed with guns and grenades

No remorse is shown

Only evident bloodlust

It is in a moment

Men can turn

From killing machines

To toppled dominos

Their ichor cascading downward

Irate rivers of Red Death

Mingling with the soiled ground

Their bodies fertilizing the earth

With their crumbling corpses

Those who make it alive

Are forever traumatized and haunted

Ailed by PTSD– a disease of soldiers

Whether from disease, accident or bloodshed

The outcome remains the same.

 

Where deviants are imprisoned

Chained and contained

Inside metal boxes

She roams past

Indifferent to prison guards

Who cannot even begin

To fathom her existence

Or its purpose

She comes

As prisoners and guards alike

Vandalize & violate

One another

Their bruises and wounds

Leaving gaping lesions

She comes

When murderers & rapists

Stagger towards the gallows

Awaiting their eternal rest

Executed by lethal injection

                           Lethal gas

                                 Hangings

                                      Electrocution    

                                            Firing squads

Whether from disease, accident or bloodshed

The outcome remains the same.

 

Who is she

That traverses and brings

Death everywhere she treads?

Whose warnings

Torture and distress

The recipient of her keening shriek?

Celts called her Bean Sidhe

Speaking of her unearthly presence

Revealing herself to some

As a fair maiden

To others

A solemn matron

Or an old crone

But those silver eyes

 Expressing melancholy

And that skin taut and ashen

Stretching over hollow cheekbones 

Cannot be mistaken or forgotten.

 

Loathed by faeries

Reclining high on jeweled thrones

Their refined fingers clasping

Golden goblets of ambrosia

Whose Epicurean tempers

Cursed & exiled her to

The world of mortals

For dreaded prophecies

Tumble unbridled from

Her silver-tongued lips

Speaking of misfortune & tragedy.

 

Feared by humans

Whose blissful ignorance

And dogged obstinacy 

Shatter completely into

A million shards

Upon her unwelcome arrival

Imminent to the shadow man’s approach

Testifying to his hold

Around the throats

Of those at the precipice

Of death’s door.

 

The mournful laments

Of Bean Sidhe

Follow the commencement

Of funerals where she stands

Half hidden behind

Weeping crowds

Blighted by demons of their own

Noticed only by the very few

After a while

She drifts forth

To the casket of the departed

Merely a zephyr felt

By spectators

Whose eyes are rimmed with red

They witness eulogies and condolences

Being spoken with a quiver

Fault lines being engraved

 In their souls

By a seismic tremor.

 

Her part

In the play called ‘Life’

Is necessary for

 Earth to continue

Its reverent circumambulations

Her prophecies

Have remained constant

Despite the tides of Time

Which disposed

Cavemen, peasants, emperors

Ushering revolutions of

Agriculture, democracy & digital technology

Her duty remains the same

Today from city alleyways

           To suburban streets

                  And rural lanes

People whisper to one another

In the big dark abyss

Of the World Wide Web:

There is a ghost woman

Who wanders at nightfall

Her ungodly shrieks

Chilling you to your very bones

Beware!

For she is the harbinger of Death

They call her Banshee.