He shall stand
His black pen-ink scrawled gibberish on my ribs-
Tore away my aching breath.
Concave messages fill leaden memories, flaming thoughts
Smell of Crimson-goodbyes lingering on paper-mache skin.
Choral whispers of songs no longer on the radio
Trace these black bagged eyes
While sleeplessness claims another weary heart.
When angelic hymns turn to demonic shrieks
Trapped inside a malignant mind’s miasma,
And “I love you”s litter the trodden ground,
Marble arms wrap around ghostly memories,
and the ice-hearted corpse perched on a stool
watches every moment.
Young men with faltering minds fall
From titan-ground mountains
Built of the adoration of fallen angel-named
Hopes,
Unable to find padding on the bed of tattered dreams
That replace autumn leaves.
Can I not reach across velveteen landscapes
To grasp sullen hands
That build the world, yet resign to Baldr’s fate?
His empty smiles made of sea-glass shards
And barbed wire wrap around his desolate thoughts-
Heartless holdings.
Given minutes or months of deadly tocks and ticks
From faces of antiquity,
Cherished upon rosary-studded altars,
The moments rest.
It needn’t be said that Beauty is in interlinked scars,
Nor that strings that bind solemn imaginations
Control this perverse marionette show
That trusts charred olive-wood beads to dance,
Only to ram against stone and mortar-fire walls.
Hinder the sickeningly sweet blast of gold encrusted horns
Trumpeting victory of slaughtered innocent thoughts,
Azurite jewels parade down weathered crows-feet.
He who once vanquished armies of soulless nights,
Without realizing the countless armies displaced
Back on his own ivory-ebony battlefield,
Etches of his own battles to be fought
On an empty path standing behind him...
Fight not for himself
But that which worlds have been built upon-
And empires have fallen to ruin for-
And families have been created by-
He stands.
So now,
When depleted atmosphere fills these scorched lungs,
Column of condolences reach the brim
Of shadow encrusted goblets,
Solace is found in the steady hands and constant words
-Sketched so carefully-
That I know not where my path may have diverged...
Here,I have made my peace,
That from ashes,
Nothing cannot be reborn-
Reshapened-
and that,
as long as whisps of morning dew fall on paths that we walk,
We shall stand.