Set In Stone

Set in stone
Like the letters overhead
When my sleep becomes my rest
Lay a flower on my chest

When I’m gone
And the earth becomes my bed
I have nothing to regret
I have lived and loved and left

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A Traitor’s Death

Wringing his hands
The clergy walks
Below the planks

Where stands a man
Condemned to die
For wicked things

Above the boards
A gentle creak
Betrays the soles

Of hooded men
With tools to make
The scene unfold

A Traitor’s death
Pronounced upon
The blinded face

A tired man
Condemned to die
For wicked things

The innocent
In silent rows
Before the stage

A verdict wrote
In faded ink
Upon a page

Within the cord
A last reward
His wages paid

A tired man
Condemned to die
For wicked things

From underneath
The ebony
His sunless cloak

The eyes are closed
But still they see
The charges made

Without a word
Or further stay
The floor gives way

For a tired man
A wicked man
Or so they say

For Those Who Mourn

For gentle eyes
Those moistened eyes
That weep for things they cannot see

For tired hearts
Those lonely hearts
Discouraged in their faithful drum

For fragile hands
Those vacant hands
That beckon still and reach to seek

For empty arms
Those restless arms
Embracing air without relief

For silent lips
Those saddened lips
Their words abducted by a grief

For hurting souls
Those aching lives
Confounded by some sordid fate

You needn’t dwell on cruelty
Or tragic days we all well know

You needn’t stay in apathy
Or wait for those death chose to go

The orbits turn and time is firm
The tears, not either can reverse

For those who mourn are soon to learn
The earth has borne an ancient curse

Adrift Alone

Adrift alone on open seas
At rest beneath a quiet sky
The depths below suspending me
As cloud parades go lazily
Across their stage adorned in white

No hint of earth or distant land
Has trespassed these horizon lines
My form reclines with open hands
Adjacent to this vast expanse
Emerging from my tired mind

I sense my body giving in
Against the pull of ancient tides
My restless soul, into the wind
Releases all it held within
The confines of this fragile life

Adrift alone on open seas
Beyond the reach of human shores
At peace, as once I longed to be
I sink into its melody
Content at last forevermore

Kiss/Kill

I want to kiss you as you drive the knife in
Kiss you as you take what I’ve been
Wanting to surrender all along

I want to kiss you as you drain my last breath
Kiss you as you take what I guess
Somehow seems to already be gone

I want to kiss you as you cut the feeling
Kiss you while my head is reeling
Running out of reasons to resist

I want to kiss you as my world collapses
Kiss you ’till this nothingness has
Traded in my agony for bliss

I want to kiss you like it’s suicidal
Kiss you like your lips are vital
Medicine for me to overuse

I want to kiss you like our world is ending
Kiss you with my heart pretending
This is all that’s left for me to do

I want to kiss you as your fingers tighten
Kiss you as I lose my sight and
Slip away in waves of consciousness

I want to kiss you in my final motion
Kiss you with my last expression
Kiss you as they lay my soul to rest

Metronome Steps

Click
Clack
Always in time
Closer in rhythm
With days that go by

Click
Clack
Steady and slow
Closing the distance
In echoing blows

Click
Clack
Beats from behind
Hunting my movements
In chase of my mind

Click
Clack
metronome steps
Building crescendos
Vibrations of death

Zombies Among You

Swing to the creak of the hinges
You people are sick in your succulent tombs
Stagger the slope from the ditches
Awake to moribund glow of the moon
Menacing only in figure
But lifeless expressions betray who we were
Balefully drifting disfigured
A ghost of the passions that struggle to stir
Some bear the marks of the broken
Poor shattered hearts all awry in our chest
Others wear feelings unspoken
Sentiments drowned and for all unconfessed
Stalking our “innocent” victims
All pressed and nicely tucked into their beds
Clambering free of our coffins
We are the shadows that trouble your heads
Stake us or break us with sleeping
But we will arise on the darkest of nights
Coming like zombies among you
Here to remind you of things you let die

Shadow Box

In bended shapes
A woman takes
The scraps of all she finds
With smallish hands
And sewing thread
To fasten it together

Behind the drapes
A record plays
To help her pass the time
In other plans
Her tired head
Can see a world that’s better

The souvenirs
Of early years
Adorn a faded quilt
Awaiting some
Appointed time
In patient little piles

Her bottled tears
And casual stares
The treasures she has built
With baby’s hair
And turpentine
Above the kitchen tiles

The winter fox
Beneath the porch
Is hiding from the hunters
Her picket fence
Is broken where
The tree line meets the field

Her shadow box
And story boards
Will hold her through ’till summer
In finger dance
The rocking chair
Beside her window sill

Vespers For Solace

Flickers of flame for a soul in the earth
Vespers for memories past in the night
Sounds in the silence now signaling birth
Echoes entombed

Wake for the dead in a sacred parade
Solace for love laid to rest in the cold
Dwelling unearthed on the edge of the spade
Warm in the womb

Sealed in the chambers that gather the lost
Marked here with etchings of deepest remorse
Laid under velvet and satin so soft
Eternal room

Moonlight as traced on the white of her dress
Sprinkles the roses in watch on the wall
Distance and dissonance sadly confess
Somber in tune

That somewhere in unison life is emerging
Somewhere in harmony death meets divine
Mourning bereft of it’s power in purging
Withers in bloom

A Solemn Reminder

Ashen remains lost to the wind
Traces of life now passed
Papers and symbols
Desk chairs and windows
Swallowed in flame

Pillars of hope crippled and broke
Giants we laid to rest
Faces of lovers
Children and mothers
Life without name

The enemy is elusive
Not a race or kind of people
We can hunt him or become him
We contain a kind of evil

The marks are ever present
On the surface of existence
The thoughts are evanescent
How the meanings tend to twist us

Innocence stained deep in our minds
Faith painted violently
Cultures and visions
Choice and decisions
Driving our fate

Ashen remains lost to the wind
Ghost of our history
Flickering embers
Gift of September
Whispers of hate

The enemy is elusive
Not a race or kind of people
We can hunt him or become him
We contain a kind of evil

The enduring testimony
Of a shattered false perception
We are living in the moment
Every life a fragile lesson

Are these numbers a reminder
I can choose my moves and errors
To be braver and be kinder
Or incite a certain terror

Are these numbers a reminder
We can all affect each other
To see hatred in the faces
Or embrace ourselves as brothers

The Hammer

Hear the ringing
Of a tiny golden hammer
On the steel back of a blade

How the confident and vivid echoes roll
As it strikes away at seconds in my soul

Every swing sends
Little shivers up my spine
For the name he carves is mine

Such a tedious affair to tell a tale
But I know those words and numbers very well

And the feeling
It’s the finitude of living
On the knife edge of a fate

Waiting patiently
In the wings of staying busy
For the last remaining date

While the hammer keeps it pace
In an absent sort of pulse
A rehearsal for the day
They will lay me in the dust
And the words will be my name
With the story of my time
Written deep within the stone
All the things that I have done

And the hammer keeps it’s pace
Such an unfamiliar friend
Like a harbinger of grace
For a swiftness of our end
All the words will be our own
And the story we have made
Written deep within the stone
All the things that we have done

Untimely

For hands that lift the fallen
Shift the heart from severed calling
Stolen love from life forsaken
So untimely from you taken

From the empty reach extending
From the emptiness unending
Shattered words now left unspoken
Silent packages unopened

For the ears where quiet settles
Dreamt of noises drowned and muffled
By a silken veil dissevered
For the seconds ticking ever

Lips unmoving in their slumber
Tides retreating pulled us under
And unwittingly we followed
Fears as one and joys as hollow

For the heart left unrequited
For the wrongs left still unrighted
In the bed your form indented
Now unfilled and unattended

And the music keeps it’s beating
For the world undone and bleeding
While the solemn angel’s finger
With no charge for which to linger

Moves to part the summer evening
Ray of hope for light deceiving
Drawn by fragile blossoms beauty
Trade the guardian his duty

For the eyes not understanding
For the mind as mine demanding
This our plight not yet determined
Not by sight nor yet by sermon

Tear these torrid shadows lurking
Out the rooms of victims hurting
Mend the ancient circle’s spinning
Set in motion from beginning

For the lifeless and the broken
For the remnant still and chosen
For the living and the dying
For these fleeting glimpses trying

To unravel this–the fabric
Of our stringed and stranger labyrinth
We are lost but not forgotten
Left to live as life our coffin

What Dreams May Come

I don’t know what dreams may come
I can’t see tomorrow
I may find a brighter sun
Or drink a deeper sorrow
But in these simple lines I know
The life will always linger
For in these lines I write to show
The life within my fingers
And if you wake to find me gone
These lines for me will tell
That though you wake to find me gone
You wake to find me well

The Deadly Manner

Marks across her eyes
She takes the shadows from the corners
Sucks the feeling from my lies
And steals the morning from the dawn

Dancing in the dark
With a deadly sort of manner
Wilted flowers on the mantle
And the scent of something wrong

Lips that never utter
Though they faintly mouth my name
As my heart begins to stutter
And the silence fairly screams

Skin as soft as satin
As her arms embrace me gently
In an ancient form of Latin
Voices echo in my dreams

Life and love and laughter
Shrink away within her presence
As she leads the steps on quicker
‘Till the movements stir the leaves

Out into the courtyard
And I cannot pull to stop her
Underneath the waning moonlight
Falling slowly through the eaves

When did we begin
My memories are dull and faded
They betray the story’s ending
Though I cannot see the start

Hand in hand she takes me
So much further down the spiral
And, in tempo, I can feel it
It’s the rhythm of my heart

Earth below my feet
These empty hollows in the mist
Here as she slows the spinning, calmly
Pulls my head against her breast

Sounds are far away now
And the light has made it’s exit
Her lips–so cold and timeless
As I taste the kiss of death