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.

 

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