A sad song plays inside my head.
I cannot escape it
Without the drowning Siren song
Of a moment's joy.
And when the echoes of the Sirens fade away,
There the sad song plays again,
And I weep.
Good fortune comes only rarely
And the Sirens are flirtatious,
But their interest is as soft as the zephyr,
And fragile besides.
The sad song fades only slowly.
I cling to it in my sensory-deprived world,
Wishing I could hear some other voice
But too afraid to be alone to try.
Too often deceived by the Siren song,
The sad song lacks hope,
But it is my home, my hearth.
No one comes near
As the song bites them,
Comforting me and stinging me all the same.
But there, below the sombre music
Chimes the bittersweet.
Perhaps the song is not so blue,
But only the cold strains of truth
Shrouding my glimpses of hope.
Is there enough of the harmony in my sad song,
Played side-by-side to the fleeting Siren song,
That one day I can learn to hear more
Than just the loudly weeping melody?
When I play that tune aloud for you
Will you stay longer than your Siren?

You incubate our love with your sad gaze
And water it like the rain the grass,
And though we celebrate change,
We flower only in the present,
Usurping eternity with the now.
Though we shine under the same sun,
Mistily recalling a gilded father,
Wanting more and feeling less,
We chase in circles bitter magic,
Dazzling our days by rusted foolishness
And we lie to bring peace to our friendship.
Is it safe yet or yesterday?
I am sorry time has devoured this dark desire,
Leaving just a fusillade and caterwaul.
Everything behind us is like food,
And the lachrymose song we sing
Cannot beguile the morose god inside us,
But the life in me will not--cannot--let go,
Though your cares put moans to my ears
And storm my torment beside your ferocious waxing,
I could not longer wear this mask without you.
But if I cannot see a future,
I yet want to listen for its language.
When the sea of our kisses are cool like glass
And the affection of hands more like a vacuum,
I warm a dead angel to watch you
And fast from raw blushes,
For only you blind the black voice in me,
Demon and goddess in one.

This post is not a poem, but a summary of tags in this journal. I'll add it to memories, and try to keep it updated.

alliteration - alliteration is used regularly in the poem (may not be entirely consistent, but frequently)
academics - references to school and related topics, particular schools, homework, etc.
alcohol - references to alcohol in general, or may be specific types of alcohol such as wine
ambition - any reference to ambition or use of the word
anakin - references to Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader or the Analogy between me and Anakin
analysis - references to analysis of myself or a situation
anger - references to anger or angry
anon lover - poems about love or sex, but not referring to a specific person, the idea of love or sex with someone
apathy - apathy, indifference, lack of feeling
astronomy - may be a reference to astronomy as a field, or any astronomical object, such as stars, planets, galaxies, etc., or occasionally theories of physics, typically with cosmological implications
awaken - references to waking up, or getting up after sleep
backwards - references to going back or going backwards
baseball - baseball references in general, or poems about teams, like the Cleveland Indians, etc.
battle - references to battles, wars or fighting
beauty - references to beauty; this may be my beauty, the beauty of another person, or of nature
betrayal - references to being betrayed or a sense of betrayal
birth - references to birth or being born or reborn
bitter - references to bitterness, being bitter, or bittersweet
blades - references to swords, or possibly knives
blood - references to blood or bleeding
body - references to the body, skin or flesh
books/read - references to books or reading
breast - references to breasts or possibly chests
broken - references to breaking, or things which are broken
cats - either about cats, or that uses a word referring to cats, such as 'kitten'
change - references to things that are changing or that need to change
cheeks - references to cheeks (not butt cheeks)
chaos - references to chaos or disorder
childhood - references to my personal past, prior to, say, 17
choice - references to choices or choosing
circle - references to circles or spirals, or going around
cleveland - any references to Cleveland, or Lake Erie
cloak - references to cloaks or cloaking something, may be real or metaphorical
clouds - references to clouds as part of the weather or as a metaphor for obstruction; also references to fog or mist
cold - these may be references to cold itself, or its by-products such as winter, ice, etc.
colours - references to any colour, may be the theme of the poem or the use of a colour to convey meaning
commissioned - a poem whose topic and theme were suggested by someone else who offered me money to write it; it's a bit out of character for me, and that's why
conflicted - does not refer to conflict in the sense of physical battle, but conflicting emotions
confusion - confusion may be emotional or intellectual, but usually will reference to the use of the word or a related word, 'confusion' or 'confused' or the like
consequences - references to consequences, or results of an action or choice
courage - references to courage or being courageous, or being brave or bravery
control - references to control of those around me or just myself and my emotions
curses - references to cursing, swearing or specific curse words
damage - references to damage, doing damage, or being damaged or harmed
daniel - poems that either are about Daniel, or that may address him as 'you' even if he's not the actual topic
danger - references to danger or the dangerous
darkness - any reference to dark, darkness, black, blackness, etc.
dawn - references to the dawn or dawning
days - references to days, or days of the week
death - references to death, dying, killing, or uses of similar words
decay - references to decay or rot
demon - any references to actual or metaphorical demons, uses of the word, but not ghosts or haunting
denial - references to denial or denying
depression - about depression or frequently the product of depression or despair
descriptive/visual - these tend to tell a story through setting a visual image, or telling a story by describing the situation; the scene may evoke emotions, but frequently they are not referenced directly
distance - references to distance to separation
doll - references to the word doll
down - references to going down or going downwards, or downward motions
dreams - references to dreams or dreaming, these may be daydreams or actual dreams
drowning - references to drowning
ears/listen - references to ears, hearing or listening
echo - references to echoes or echoing, or repeating
emotions - references to emotions and feelings, particularly if there are many of them, or they are non-specific feelings; specific feelings such as 'fear' or 'love' have their own tags
end - references to the end, finals, conclusions, etc.
eulogies - many of these are about dead cats, although they may also be about dead people
events - these poems refer to specific events in my life, they may not be major events, but describe things I did or said in actuality, usually writing while I was doing the thing described or shortly thereafter
evil - references to the word 'evil', possibly the devil or Satan
expectations - references to expectations of others, or things which are expected
eyes/see - references to the eyes or to seeing or vision, also blinding
faces - references to faces
failure - references to failure, or mistakes; they may or may not be specific; also may be a sense of failure
fall - references to the act of falling, not the season
family - any references to family members, parents, brother, etc., or my non-existent children
fate - references to fate, destiny or doom
favourites - these are some of my personal favourites
fear - references to fear or being afraid
fire/burn - references to fire, burning or heat; not merely warmth
flowers - references to flowers or usually specific flowers, or parts of flowers
foolish - references to being foolish, foolhardy, or fools, possibily also stupidity
footsteps - references to footsteps
forget - references to forgetting
fragile - references to fragility or frailty
freak - any reference to feeling like a freak or being deviant
free - references to being free, escaping, or freedom
friends - references to friends, specific friends, or friendship in general
futility - references to futility or things which are futile
future - references to the future which may be near, or distant future
games - references to games, playing or specific games like chess; may include references to strategy
gender identity - masculine vs. feminine conflicts inside myself; imposition of gender stereotypes, etc.
geography - references to either political or physical geography, such as names of places like Rome or landscape features like ravines
glass - references to glass or things made of glass, or glass-like things like crystal
god - these may be references to god (not just interjections like 'oh my god'), or they may be references to religion or lack of it in general
goodbye - references to goodbyes, or farewells, or parting
gone - references to things which have gone or left, or leaving
greek - these contain actual Greek words
hair - references to hair
hands/touch - references to hands or the sense of touch
haunt - referencs to haunting or ghosts
hate - references to hating or loathing
heal - references to getting better/well, healing, requests or offers for it, emotional or physical
heart - references to the heart
heaven/hell - references to heaven, hell, or any other afterlife
help me - references to needing saved or rescued, or references to the word 'help'
hiding - these usually refer to the use of the word 'hide' or related words, and are typically a response to fear, but may be a response to other emotions as well
history/myth - references to historical or mythological characters, events or times
home - references to home, or houses, or anyplace one can live like apartments, etc.
hope - references to hoping or having hope
hunger/thirst - references to hunger, or thirst; may including quenching the thirst or likewise
hunt - references to hunters, hunting or prey
hypatia - references to the historical Hypatia, or references to the daughter I'd like to name Hypatia
iconoclastic - rejecting the status quo, particularly of society
ignorance - references to ignornace, ignorant people, or not knowing something
illness - references to sickness, symptoms, or specific conditions I have; not injuries
illusion - references to appearances or illusions
imagine - references to imagining
indiana - references to Indiana/Indiana University or poems written in Indiana; possibly linguistics
insanity - references to 'madness', or 'crazy' or the like
intelligence - poems either about or referring to my high intelligence
ironic - these poems may describe irony or themselves be ironic
janus - references to gates, doors or windows; for the curious, Janus was the Roman god of gates and doorways, he was the two-faced god, the god of coming and going (and January is named after him)
joy - references to joy or enjoying
jewels - references to jewels or specific gemstones such as diamond, etc.
key - references to keys or locks, locking or unlocking
kiss - references to any kiss, but usually many refer to a specific kiss
laugh - references to laughing or laughter
letters - references to letters (not letters of the alphabet), and possibly emails
lies - references to lies or deception
light - references to light, lamps, candles or beacons
lightning - references to lightning or thunder
literature - references to literary characters or authors
loneliness - references to being alone, or feelings of loneliness
lost - references to being physically lost, or losing oneself
love - these may be references to either emotional or physical love; it may be erotic or Platonic love
magic - references to magic or sorcery
magnetic - these are poems I created with my magnetic poetry kits
mask - references to masks
mazes - references to mazes
melissa - these refer to Melissa, or address her as 'you' in the poem
memory - references to memory or remembering, or reminders
metals - references to metals, such as steel, silver, gold, iron, etc.
mind/soul - references to minds, souls or thinking (not pensively but reasoning)
mirror - references to mirrors or reflections
miss you - references to missing someone
monster - references to monsters or beasts
moon - references to the moon or moonlight
mouth/voice - references to the mouth, lips or the voice
music - references to music, radios, singing or dancing
naked - references to nakedness; these are not often actual nakedness but a sense of exposure
names - references to names, or naming, not individual names
need - references to needs or needing
night - references to the night, or describing the night
nightmares - references to nightmares
noise - references to noise, cacophony, or white noise
nothing - references to nothing, but also no one, nowhere, etc.
numb - references to being numb or unfeeling
numbers - any use of numbers, countable or uncountable, or to mathematics
pain - references to physical or emotional pain
paint - references to paint or paintings
paranoia - references to paranoia or being paranoid
path - references to path, roads, or walking along said routes
pattern/shape - references to patterns or shapes
pensive - poems usually written when I'm being thoughtful, rather than driven emotionally, tend to be mellow and low-key
pillows - references to pillows
poison - references to poison or being poisoned
politics - references to politics or politicians, by topic or occasionally just the use of the word
price - references to paying, selling, or the price of something, usually metaphorically
prison - any reference to prisons, cages, chains or dungeons
prize - poems entered into poetry contests that won a prize
promises - references to promises or promising
protect - references to protecting, protection or guarding
published - poems which have been published... actually, these are not consistently tagged
questions - references to questions or asking, or poems which have a lot of lines that end with question marks
rain - references to rain or raining
reason - references to logic or reason
regret - references to regrets or regretting
rhyme - I rarely rhyme, but not never
risk - references to risk or taking chances
rose - references to roses or thorns
running - these refer to running away from something, not the sport of running, although occasionally running toward something
rust - references to rust or tarnish
sacrifice - references to sacrificing for another, self-sacrifice, etc.; not sacrifices, as in killing
safety - references to feelings of safety, or security, or physical safety
sagan - references to Carl Sagan
scream - references to screams or screaming
sea - references to the sea, the shore, other bodies of water, water in general, or sea-related items such as anchors
seasons - references to the four seasons or any reference to names of the months
secrets - references to secrets, or things that can't be talking about
seek - references to seeking or searching or looking
sf/f - poems with a science fiction or fantasy topic, such as wizards or were inspired by books in that genre, etc.
shadows - references to shadow or shadows, shadowing or the like
shell - references to shells, or carapaces
shelter - references to shelter
short - these poems are 20 lines or shorter
silence - references to quiet or silence
sleep/bed - references to sleeping or beds
smile - references to smiles or smiling
snow - references to snow or use of the word
sorrow - references to sadness, mourning or sorrow
speaking - references to my speaking, or my inability to speak, or the like; not quotations, but the act itself
stanzas - these poems are writen in stanzas, they may be regular stanzas (consistent within the poem) or they may be irregular
star wars - references either to the movies themselves or to their plots or characters
stars - references to stars
stolen - references to things which have been stolen, stealing, or those who have been robbed
storm - references to storms or use of related words
stranger - references to strangers, or possibly outsiders or foreigners
strength - references to strength, power, or being strong
sun - references to the sun
sunset - references to the sunset or sundown, twilight, etc.
survival - references specifically to surviving or surviving some hardship, not merely living
tattoo -- references to my tattoos
te daela - references to characters from my Children of Daela stories, or poems about said stories
tears - references to tears, weeping or crying
time - references to time or use of the word
tired - references to being tired or exhaustion
tongue - references to tongues
torture - references to torture or torment
towers - references to towers or walls
travel - references to traveling, driving, trips, journeys, usually with specific destinations; or possibly wandering that's been completed
trust - references to trust or trust issues
truth - references to truthfulness or honesty
tv - references to television or things on television
untitled - these poems are untitled
victory - references to victory or winning
virginity - references to virgins, virginity or sexual inexperience; metaphorical (innocence) or more literally (ex. celibacy)
void - references to the void, a vacuum or emptiness
wanderlust - references to wanderlust, or wandering
waste - references to waste or wastelands
weak - references to weakness
weather - references to weather, rain, snow, sleet, lightning, etc.
weight - references to my weight problems, dieting or attempts to get thin, or consequences thereof
whisper - references to whispering or speaking softly
wings - references to birds, wings or flying
wisdom - references to wisdom or use of related words like 'wise'; not knowledge
wounds - references to wounds, wounding, wounded, scars, crutches, wheelchairs or other injuries such as cutting, etc.
write/pen - references to writing or writing instruments like pens or pencils, or possibly paper

There are more forthcoming. When I do add them, I'll note the date of update, but I'll alphabetize the new tags with the others.

EDIT: last update 2005 July 23 -- it may take a couple days to get everything updated, though

The ice plays pariah to my madness,
Bleeding cold champagne like caramel.
I take my temerity to bed alone;
Even a gypsy's joy cannot have me,
For the sacred salt of starry dreams
Poison my diamond carapace with my pillow.
The child in me makes chains,
But with sweet reminders of summer,
Whose spring is still white winter,
Hint at heaven and honeyed heartache.
My tongue throbs with velvet truth
That fate finds me unable to speak,
Though my iron web would break with naked courage,
But my lips melt as the words linger there.
How may my mean mornings be remembered
When black blood makes my beauty marbled
And cools this cunning ghost,
Seeing me home to nightly haunting shadows
That pretend to know what I need?
I pierce my own breast by brazenly wanting
To be so feverish and free in deathlike din,
Showing and saying that my secret is only void
Which kisses my eyes and kills my breath.
Only a blue laugh can last ten thousand eternities,
But I have no smiles left to live so long.
Whisper of me when the wind blows,
And wake me once your pink petals
Would make me a willing prisoner.

The rain falls with a muffled drumbeat
Of percussive white noise,
And though I have only just escaped it,
I find myself longing to return
Despite the chill the wind brings to my bones
And the goosebumps already on my skin.
My hair is wet and hangs in my face
Covering my eyes and letting me listen,
Letting the patternless noise
Help me drown the desperate sorrows
That had made my cheeks wet and eyes red
Even before this latest cloudburst.
I had stood like this alone many times before
Soaking up the thunderstorms
And making their strength a part of my heart.
Steeling myself against the likelihood
That I would always stand thus alone:
One body as fierce as the thunderclap;
One heart as bright as the lightning;
One soul as dark as the clouds;
One like as persistent as the rains.
But my only companion could be
These dark and gloomy cumulonimbus
That brought my body and heart, my soul and life
Back to me in aperiodic moments.
But always the thunderstorms are followed
By days of sunlight and nights of starlight
Filled with the other sounds I tried my best to ignore.
Sounds of laughter and talking
From the earth and not the sky,
And I find I wonder more and more
Whether I am really of the thunderstorm
Or might only wish to be,
And what I might be instead.
The storms are always partnered with sunlight,
One that follows the other,
And then the first again.
What could I be partnered with then?
And all around is just the rain
And the wet hair plastered to my face.
What is it I'm not seeing?
I ask over and over again
Will I find my answer in storm or sunlight?
Do I wait or do I return to the rains
That gave me my strength to come this far?
But I am already chilled and soaked to the bone,
So it is to my storm that I return,
To lose myself in the fog and the downpouring rain.
I may find nothing,
But at least I am at home.

The day has had the look of twilight
And finally the clouds brought the rain,
The dark and gloomy thunderstorm just as the sun set
That the forecast had been threatening all week.
Now the clouds are lingering,
Leaving the night even darker than usual.
A perfect night for introspection,
And even better for thinking about you.
My thoughts of you are more like the storm just passed
Than the quiet darkness that follows.
The storm brings so many questions
Even as does your smile.
You ask me to tell you the things I'm thinking
And like lightning, I know my words might hurt
Saying them abruptly and without reflection.
You have so many different needs than I
And to please you, I must do for you the most unnatural of acts,
To say for you what I want no one to notice in me.
How I love the rain,
Am comforted by the thunder,
And you ask me to replace the rain with my tears
And the thunder with whispers of your beauty.
Would you have me be like every other spring storm?
They that blow through with compliments and heartache
And leave nothing behind but sorrow.
Know you perhaps from the silent messages I leave
And the quiet glances and smiles
And the trust I've allowed between us
That I already think and believe what you want to hear,
But I continue to fear saying what I feel
Will only have the opposite effect I desire.
And so we are both left a little lost in this darkness,
Aware, but unable to see.
The storm is gone, and without it
Darkness will eventually give way to day.
Let us change each other while we wait
And reintroduce ourselves in the dawn,
For here is spring, and another storm is coming,
Only the when and why I wonder.
If only it was me for whom the rains came.

My torment is tinged with time and shyness.
The sad sense I have of the fate of our lies
Quiets an essential quest for knowing you.
I would gild my gaze with your beauty,
But knowing none of your needs—
You want yarn and cries to be true—
I can only watch and whisper my cares in shadow.
Ah! Beneath me a blue veil cools hot skin
And rain runs in a juggernaut from dreams.
My blood leaves little affection for this guile.
When will I lapse fully into that old carapace?
The one that with sweet strokes made me think I was safe.
Raw and red roses wind about my black life.
Pure and purple language chain me to the heaven of you.
Would winters were more than screams from a pyre.
Friends and goddesses alike fall upon a sea of mean missives
To still demons and drunk prayers bewailed through conflict.
My head longs for home, but it is you I ask after.
Aloof from all I am as if gone ten moons ago,
The nights put the now in the herculean light of eternity.
It’s crazy, but not only a forest of kisses can find me.
Despite the delicate days of wanting and parting,
I would worship god if he could give me you,
But I know the knife in my breast may be truth
Or only the subterfuge you are pleased to play with.
Who can spring me from this honeyed hell of cunning?
I go on, but I give less than two thousand suns.
By then my asking will not be suffering but bold caterwaul.
Will it be a sweet or stormy mother you make?

It's an easy thing to do,
To go on pretending.
My life is all about pretending.
Pretending I'm happy,
Pretending I'm in control.
How can pretending you love me
Be any different?
It's a cruel thing,
And I do it to myself.
I put on my mask of glass
To protect me from too much truth.
And then the day comes inevitably
When truth comes too close,
Trying too hard to make me see
What I've contentedly been ignoring.
As if hit with a right cross,
My mask shatters on my face,
Scarring my cheeks
And blinding me with reality.
What can I do?—It's too much!—
Except to grope around the floor at my feet,
Cutting hands besides, searching
For the slivers of my mask,
Trying to glue them back together
Through my tears of blood.
Things will never be the same
Even though I go on denying.
Reality, it hurts too much.
At least behind my mask
No one can see me cry.

He inquires of me one day,
What colour are you?
Pointing to a tall museum pillar
Dressed up in chartreuse green
He says, that's the one.
I glanced at him and compared critically.
Hmm. Yes, bright and vibrant,
And daring to stand out.
Even inside his careful disguises,
That's him.
But what is colour?
Colour in the wider universe
Is what is emitted in photons
Through excitation and energy.
Substances can only emit certain kinds of light
And absorb the same kind back.
But on Earth, things are more complicated.
A pigment colour is determined by
What shade or shades of light it reflects,
While all other are absorbed or scattered.
His yellow-green in the heavens
Is the shade of our mother sun where she radiates most.
Young and life-giving,
And so far, well away from middle age.
How like him to pick
The colour that has the most to give back here.
And what of you? he asks me again.
How can I reply but with black?
As a pigment, it is the best,
And absorbs all the light that strikes it, giving nothing back.
As a feature of space, it is the emptiness,
The vacuum that makes up most of everything.
But in my youth I was turquoise once--
A compromise between my parents--
And shades of blue and purple, too.
A collapsing blue-giant star, I'd say,
Shading through the ultraviolet.
But blue giants have a nasty way of
Doing too much too quickly.
They make grand supernovae
And collapse into black holes
That eat up their companions,
Absorbing more than light, matter, too,
And greedily refusing to give it back.
That's me.
And what are we together?
A passing fling, trapped in each other's gravity.
For now, we spiral closer.
For the first time in my short, lonely life,
I can bask in the glow
Of your main sequence starlight
And wonder what it's like to be like you.
What a change from the harsh x-rays
Of my own accretion disk.
But what of you? Why stay?
Your fate here is only death.
Soon I will begin stealing matter from your surface,
And in the end, swallow you
Into my blackness, too.
I don't want to hurt you,
And I don't want to lose you.
In the end, though, if another brilliant star
Does not shoot by and pass too close,
Disrupting our gravitational spiral,
We will become one body, not two,
And from this embrace,
Neither will escape.
What do you pray for now,
My main sequence companion?
Even if my soul is black
There is more to me than the vacuum.
And without you, I am just another black body,
Slowly dying,
Until I'm as cold as the darkness around me.

Φίλος in Ancient Greek
Is the love of friends and family.
It is the essence of Platonic love,
A love held within the mind,
For those that share your life.

Έρος in Ancient Greek
Is the love one gives to lovers
And to whores and sometimes wives, too.
It is erotic love, lust,
The love shared with the body.

Φίλος and έρος in my mind
Have run afoul of each other.
I do not know which is my companion
Because what I feel for family and other friends
Is not like love at all.

Φίλος and έρος in my thoughts
Have long since been combined,
Seeking out friend and lover together,
But if you have only emotion to give,
What do I do with έρος alone in bed at night?

Φίλος and έρος in practice
Ask if I can trust the one without the other.
All my οι φίλοι have betrayed me.
How do I keep from getting emotionally involved in έρος?
How do I deny the physical with φίλος?

Φίλος vs. έρος in us
Is perhaps too much to be asking.
I do not know where the line is
Or if you will ever cross it again.
What are they, really, in my head?

Love in English
Is just one word for all these things,
And before I can define it,
I can only come here.
I love you, whatever that means.

Φίλος and έρος in my heart
Choke me in their tug-of-war.
I will be better off not deciding
Under whose spell I fall.
I can’t know. I’ve forgotten all my Greek.

The ice fields of Europa,
Vast and flat and young.
Scars filled in from below
And each crack in her icy skin
A crevasse a mile deep
But sealed all the same.
Forbidden and unforgiving.
Is there life beneath the ice?
How does one discover it?
The tides of Jupiter keep her warm inside,
But when meteors rend her surface,
The shell is reformed
By the coldness of space,
And she goes on again in silence.
But time is all she needs.
In five billion years more
The sun will flame out to red giant.
Now too distant to warm her,
The ice will melt and her surface thaw.
If there is not life there now,
There soon will be,
At least until the star collapses
And ice returns with a vengeance.
So let me be like Europa,
Waiting for my sun to thaw my shell.
Time is all I need.
But who will be my sun?
And you, are you only Jupiter,
Just enough that I don’t freeze solid?
And what will the sun do to you thawing me?

My body lay unmoving,
My head resting in the cradle of the sand.
A wave licked gently at one out-stretched hand.
A lover’s kiss.

I opened my eyes
To gaze mournfully at the fog-shrouded moon.
It wavered, that orb of sundance and dreaming.
See me as I am.

Tender, my darling.
Don’t look at my cold and restless image.
My face is the mirror of my dark visions.
Turn away.

The moonbeams scar me.
I turn over to taste the sea and the brine like my heart.
On my elbows, the world is still as glass,
And as fragile.

My pain is of unknowing.
My kisses fall on a wasteland of cotton and down.
My bright eyes are the shadows of oxidation.
You cannot know them.

Now, stand with me here.
Touch on the loneliness of the soul; magic:
It is the unknowable gleam of future sentience.
My beach is washing away.

They were the cold, darkling footsteps,
Its pace a music’s dance.
They were the footsteps from my dream,
The dream at the railroad tracks.
No train has been there in years,
Longer than I’ve lived.
The wood is rotting,
The rails rusted through,
Like dry crumpled chrysanthemums leaves.
In my dream, I walked this place,
Mile after mile, everyday.
Going nowhere,
Finding no one.
The footsteps frightened me,
And I rejoiced.
I kept walking,
And the footsteps followed me,
But I saw no one.
I knew on one.
My dream went on
And I never woke up.
When the sun set, I slept
But I never dreamed
In my dream, there was no one but me,
And those darkling shadow steps.
I wondered only once about my mother,
But kept on walking.
My shadow had no answers,
And I had no more questions.
At last, one night I went to my knees
And threw those chrysanthemum leaves into the air.

You don’t understand.
I’m trying not to hear your screaming.
The sunlight is bleaching my hair.
The darkness comes faster with every step forward.
It needs the dreaming,
The childish midnights in fear,
To know the reason for living.
Our death comes slowly after.
It’s our last dark night of hell.
Don’t call my name,
I won’t be listening.
My lips are red and cracking.
My eyes are closed to see you
In the cold white noise of dying.

The power of death
Runs cold and fierce.
The presence of death
Is near.

A Shadow walks
In bone bright night.
Ancient,
Older than the stars.

The hand of death
Is dark and shadowed.
The fear of death
Is strong.

The jewel he seeks
Is Nature’s breath.
Fragile,
Forward to the Sleep.

The reach of death
Is far and wide.
The age of death
Lives on.

A streambed flows
Empty to the sea.
Forgotten,
Helpless in the heat.

The face of death
Is cold and dark.
The dreams of death
Are endless.

Dream explodes.
Vision tangled.
Eyes in whirling purple mists.

Sorcerous fledgling.
Futures decelerate
Past acceptable parameters.

I rock slowly,
Eyes closed.
Weeping.

Communion wrenches.
Dramas battled.
Faith in demonology vanquished.

Ray guns envisioned.
Shrinks focused
On the moral norm.

I rock slowly,
Eyes staring.
Confusion.

Authoritarian killed.
Veil mangled.
Vows of a new necrology.

Warp speed entrances.
Sagan forgotten
In the déjà vu of yesteryear.

I rock slowly,
Eyes vacant.
Darkness.

I am death.
We are dead now.
The future is for ever and Forever is for Never.

Dreams are lost.
We are forgotten.
Universe weeps.
We are alone among the multitude.

We are the necropolis of conceit.
Save Me.