| |
THE DREAM-CAT
––––––––
When nighttime spins her darkened web
and silence chants her charmed refrain,
the dream-cat comes on soundless paws
with enigmatic eyes.
Her shadow prowls the fog-laced hills
where wizards dwell and magic thrives.
Windswept omens does she bring
to those versed in her ways.
She tiptoes ‘round my sleeping head,
against my cheeks her whiskers brush.
Her purrs, like velvet, cast a spell
that opens doors unknown.
Her sphinx-like contours whisper of
a thousand ancient gods divine.
Surrender to her mystic gaze...
behold another world.
THE DREAMING DEAD
––––––––
Rays of sun her halo makes
when hazy afternoons awake
to laughing crows and drone of bees
and lazy shadows cast by trees.
When the web of night is spun
and orange light of day is done
the starry sky becomes her gown,
light as whispers, soft as down.
Dew-kissed lawns caress her feet
moon flowers bloom, ghost-white and sweet
and crickets charm the moon agleam;
I wonder if the dead still dream.
THE DYING TREE
––––––––
Gather round the dying tree
adorned with lights and glittering things
like lipstick on a rotting corpse
that whispers Merry Christmas.
Empty boxes, broken gifts,
strangled by ribbons green and red
fill my heart with dread and holly;
visions of dead things dance in my head.
Sleigh bells slaying, carols playing,
meaningless greetings from friends now strangers;
sugar plum lies blind children's eyes
while plastic babes lie in their mangers.
So gather ‘round the dying tree
adorned with lights and glittering things
that hide the horrors of the night
and make the Yuletide bright.
––––––––
Three special gifts to you from me
I give with love rejoicing...
a tattered stocking filled with tears,
the passing of another year,
a toast to Father Christmas with a
cup of poisoned cheer.
EIGHT YEARS LATER
––––––––
Nights are the blackest and coldest of all
when gone is the one whose name you call
to fill your sleep with roses red,
the emptiness makes you ache to be dead.
Mornings are dismal and bleak as a grave
when far is the one whose love you crave
but not as bleak, nor cursed with rue
as thoughts of tomorrows spent without you.
ELECTRIC EDIE
––––––––
Electric Edie with painted eyes,
electric tears of glitter dust she cries.
Living at the speed of light,
an underground princess
with hair of silver-white.
A poor little rich girl fantasy,
a psychedelic flower dancing free...
A superstar of the neon lights.
Hiding from the madness
of publicity;
Tearing apart her mind
to find reality.
Lost in repetitious
echoes of infinity.
Electric Edie, her soul is on fire
tripping and flying
higher and higher she dared.
Touching the sky like a gilded bird,
she cried for help
but no one heard
or cared...
A shooting star in the dead of night.
Watch her ride in her limousine;
a fading smile in a magazine
is all she left behind.
EPITAPH FOR A DREAM
––––––––
In the earth beneath this weathered stone
Here lie the ashes of a dream,
A dream that was forged in blood and bone
But never saw the sunlight's gleam.
In this grave lies a dream unborn,
It can never return, and the angels mourn.
It rests in pieces, but not in peace,
The sorrow death brings will never cease.
For every dream that it enslaved...
This epitaph shall be engraved.
EXQUISITE ALCHEMY
––––––––
His eyes are most caliginous,
haunting as a moonless night.
Seductive,
Horizonless, strange as hell,
his gaze, like a flame,
mesmerizes.
Like a gypsy moth, I'm drawn,
unable to resist, despite
my burning wings.
The deeper I look within,
more secrets there are to find.
Inside him, there is a spirit
intrinsic and untamed by time.
His touch is like spellbinding
quicksilver moonrise.
He makes me ache for more.
In dark storms he stands
on flowering hilltops
scented with jasmine, sweet
with rain-steeped myrrh,
profoundly conjuring
an exquisite alchemy.
Chanting, he burns his candles
to ambiguous gods above.
Inscrutable, erogenous,
he ignites fires
inside my mind.
I blaze with fervor.
I crave with hunger.
I love him as I have loved
no other.
THE FATHER
––––––––
With his eyes locked between
the pages of a book
and his lips wrapped around the bit
of his pipe,
he looks up every now and then
to scowl
and hurl daggers in my direction.
His joy is my suffering.
His hatred unwavering.
In his silence he dwells;
his disdain for me increases.
In his eyes swim his bitterness
and his urge to dismantle me.
Day after day,
he shatters my spirit, diseases
my mind.
Night after night.
he poisons my sleep with dreams
wrapped in dread.
I stick silver pins in his image
to make him disappear,
but still he remains,
forever haunting the dungeon
he designed and constructed
around my soul.
He sits and reads
as the Sunday morning sunlight
filters through the green
of vertical blinds.
His snowy thinning hair
adds more years to his age.
His face, pale and gaunt
like an unearthed corpse,
contorts with a sneer.
He looks away, disgusted,
seething,
regretting his vows.
––––––––
THE FATHER (continued)
I picture him deceased
and that helps suppress my pain.
I nail his casket shut and then
secure it with a chain to keep him
from ever rising up again.
But he always returns;
he refuses to die,
even though in his heart
he's already dead.
THE FINAL TOAST
––––––––
Gather on this black-draped night
and let the final toast begin.
Family, friends, and foes alike,
The door is open, do come in.
Enter if your soul does dare
where mirth and merriment abound.
The Dance of Death unites us all
around my burial mound.
Feast until your bellies ache
and fill your glasses to their brim.
To kisses born in flames awake;
don't let the mood grow grim.
A toast to darkness now unending
filled with hellbound souls descending.
Drink to shadows drenched with dread:
a toast to the undead!
Sip my spirit and taste my blood,
a nectar so divine.
Quaff me in your silver goblet,
sweet like elderberry wine.
FIVE O'CLOCK FEAR
––––––––
Five o'clock fear creeps slowly
like a Cadillac of funeral black,
while afternoon haze slips dreamily
through slats of Venetian blinds,
falling gently on bandaged legs and
crocheted doilies, half-completed.
Aged hands, pale and faintly sweet,
touch my cheeks as if to absorb
some childhood magic. Eyes of blue
speckled with pain, watch the world
from a wing-back chair with thread-worn
arms. Speaking without words;
smiling without joy; even then, I knew.
Shadows converge 'neath attic cobwebs
haunted by ghosts trapped in boxes
full with remnants of long ago lives.
For some odd reason I remember
the silverfish in the pantry, the white
ceramic tiles that back-dropped your
agony, the black rotary telephone that
sat in silence after the doctor was called.
I remember a November tasting of tears
and flurries on my tongue, the smell of
rubbing alcohol fading from my nostrils,
and the five o'clock fear that always
imprinted itself in the lines
upon your face.
FLY AWAY, MY RAVEN BLACK
––––––––
Fly away, my raven black
into the dark and bittersweet
that whispers like a velvet night;
unfold your wings and fly.
Fly away, so far away
beyond this wretched world forlorn
of time and tears synonymous;
unfold your wings and fly.
Fly away, my raven black
into a dream of indigo.
No silent tomb nor cobwebbed gloom
will be your gilded cage.
Fly away, so far away
beyond the fading twilight mist.
Embrace the freedom of the sky;
unfold your wings and fly.
FOR A MOMENT
––––––––
I lay on the floor of your empty room
and stared at the ceiling of white,
screaming your name again and again
until my throat burned with fire
and my lips cracked and bled.
You did not answer.
I crawled like a baby,
teary-eyed and broken,
clinging to the past and wishing away today.
For a moment I prayed
for death to take me too.
But all it did was sneer.
One by one, I removed your clothes
from their white plastic hangers
and emptied out your dresser drawers.
Your scent, familiar and sweet,
lingered in the air for a moment.
And then it was gone.
I thought, for a moment, your face I glimpsed
but it was just the shadow of a cloud
moving across the wall.
I thought, for a moment, your voice I heard,
alive and sanguine like before,
but it was just the sage-scented breeze.
And nothing more.
FOREVER DANCING
––––––––
Silently the angels weep
as I lie in dreamless sleep;
tears they shed upon the stones
bequeath no comfort to my bones.
Mournful wings bleak shadows cast,
veil my name claimed by the past.
Entombing as a six-foot hole,
eternal like my wintry soul.
Cry not for me,
weep not a breath.
I'm not alone;
I dance with Death.
FORGET ME NOT
––––––––
Forget me not when murmurs the wind
and dead leaves in the graveyard dance,
when storm clouds gather high above,
remember me forever, my love.
When withering flowers hang low their heads
perfumed with death's aroma sweet
and cold rain blurs the window glass
there I shall be, my precious love.
When black-feathered birds sing sad their songs
and ghostly mist in meadows looms
and dew, like pearls, cling to the webs,
forget me not
forget me not.
FREAKS
––––––––
Naked we stand
for all to see.
No more secrets to hide,
no more corners of the mind
to hide in.
Like clowns with radio-active
eyes, and bearded ballerinas
dancing, we are all freaks
in a lunatic circus
of the bizarre.
Walking high on wires
electrified, defying death
with arrogant self-confidence,
we live our lives behind
faces smiling, frowning
masks of polyurethane...
The crowd cries out for more.
Hurry! Hurry!
Step right on in;
the circus sideshow is about
to start!
Naked we stand
for all to see;
each one of us a freak
in a transparent jar.
FROM OUT OF THE ABYSS
––––––––
In a dark and dreamless hour it came,
with claws and fangs,
from out of the abyss.
Hideous, disrupting the night
into black jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Exploding like a supernova;
a scream like no other.
It shook the walls.
It dripped with blood.
Appalling.
Horrific.
Deafening.
My heart went still.
My mind, disoriented, swirled like haze.
My muscles tensed. My fingers trembled.
And then, again, it shattered the night.
Murderous.
Consuming.
Conjuring a madness from deep within
the bowels of the earth.
Again and again it rang out.
Louder and louder!
Over and over!
Like a knife blade stabbing,
deeper and deeper!
Until the stained-glass windows imploded
and with pain my ears did throb.
And the castle walls cracked and crumbled away.
And then, all at once,
the screaming
stopped.
The silence returned. The throbbing ceased.
I realized the screams were mine...
And the cold night exhaled a sigh.
GRAY MANOR
––––––––
A crumbling, moldering mansion am I,
high on a hilltop I silently stand.
Haunted by ghosts that are chained to the past,
bleak apparitions that weep in the night.
Secrets are hidden inside bricked-up walls
shielded by tapestries, frayed and decayed.
Chandeliers, cobwebbed, once brilliant and grand
fallen like angels on dusty floors, smashed.
Portraits in hallways with faces misplaced;
dead people's images, names forgotten.
Rooms cold and empty, void of a heartbeat.
Perilous stairwells that only lead down.
Doors are shut tightly, locked, never opened;
keys that once freed them, corroded by tears.
Stygian shadows protect my ruins.
No one may enter, and no one may leave.
Windows like tormented eyes that observe
the smiles of the people that pass outside,
Laughing, their voices echo in madness
cracking the panes into fragmented blurs.
A crumbling, moldering mansion am I,
weathered, decrepit, I silently stand.
Embedded with memories, painful smiles,
knowing the bulldozer's blade is coming.
GRAY SKIES
––––––––
Gray skies dance in my lover's eyes
reflect my crippled soul.
Gray skies weep for our love's demise
but never can console.
Gray skies hide all my tears opaque
behind their crystal rain.
Gray skies are filled with shadows dark,
endless, unconstrained.
Gray skies flow through my pulsing veins
above my grief they laugh.
Thunder and lightning stir my brain;
each one an epitaph.
Gray skies form into marble thoughts
and dreams and memories,
but soon they commence to crumble down
like swords of Damocles.
