The Crazy Shades

All the ghosts are dead
And all the madmen live forever.
And many of the grassblades bled
In Pennsylvania's Summer weather.

Any ghosts may walk,
And any who care to sleep
May stand upon a rock
And very gently weep.

And all the crazy shades
From red to violet-blue
Are splashed across the glades
Where violence met its due.

Now mankind takes its measure
From an individual man.
The single king's our azure
In a sky without a span.

We give such high regard to death
And such little thought for life;
Forgiving all at graveside Lethe,
But the living's trifles stir up strife.

Fire, fire, glowing;
Translucent fingers fast as flight.
Fire quickly growing,
Quickly tearing up the night.

Fire bright and furious
Has no lips or eyes,
Yet roars at the sight so curious
When every thing it touches dies.

How important is our star,
The one we call the sun?
When seen from sufficiently far,
It's an insignificant one.

How important is an ant
Or a single human cell?
Held as sacred, in descant,
But in practice aimlessly expelled.

And all the crazy shades
And all the roads they paint,
All the sights and all the grades
Of reality make the saint.

And any good host
Will close the metal door
And drink a toast
To ghosts evermore.

Birds are flying now
Trusting well their own white feathers.
Find the word and find out how
Even the dead can live together.

Fire, fire, blushing;
Rushing upwards after dying sparks.
Fire, fire, crushing;
Pushing in and out of human hearts.

Fire in the mind and fire
Filling all the soul.
It's in our blood and gears and wire
Swallowing us whole.

Untitled II

You read them aloud.

You bite into emptiness.

Like eating magic...

Foregoing the lengthiness.

Your book is tragic.

Print storms inside; a word cloud

Behind your false eyes

Circuits don't connect correct.

You see your black lies

Making the white page not proud.

The One Hope When All Hope Is Lost

Patience.

Until the day breaks,

And you hear the sound a bird makes

And the sun breaks into sight.

Though there's silence now and there is no light--

Not even a glimmer to pull the trigger by.

When you thought that dying was a comforting lie,

And deep despair paralyzed your existence,

You had no energy to hear my insistence

That everything changes, everything changes.

Valleys can rise till they're high mountain ranges,

Oceans become deserts, old junk is the new must-have;

Depression will turn into joy someday; just have

Patience.

Don't Think. Run.

A lady shadowed dark in substance and
Silvered in moonlit outline
Stood as the last resistance and

Breathed in the meantime

Between comfortable sleep and peace and
Chaos. Chaos. Insanity. Death. Blood. War.

And she waited with forced calm like sea sand
Resting tensely undisturbed by the tides thus far.

Distantly a voice rose in barbaric chant.

As a demon's, this voice was many and was one.

It swooped over colorless hills and it slant

Around tree trunks and ruins of forts long undone.

"An enemy new and known in design
Coming down from long ago
And from yesterday's future line
Of light-up plastic hero

We are, and we have sacrificed mercy
On the bronze altar, from which some of its ash drifts
On the sky's sighs and floats up and hurries
On the stale wind in the red cloud to the black rifts

Where stars died screaming swallowed alive and
There the white ash dissipates.
We are enemies revived, and
Disguised reprobates-

Disguised as horror; in reality worse.
Lost. Lost. All is lost. Hope. Mercy. Life. Lost.
Death is our song and we'll sing every verse,
Turn you to dust, to desert, to frost."

The lady, black shadow against less-black sky,

Was not impatient, not caring, not looking for dawn
Rising head and rising lashes unveil an eye

With a fire inside that will burn on and on.

And she heard the death song

And heard the threats, boasts, warnings.

And the lady smiled. And she hummed along.

And all the nights, and all the mornings

And days and years and time and tide

And things accomplished and things not done

And thoughts and memories gathered inside

The lady. And she saw fear and said one word to it. Run.

The Hooded Figure

*

Danger glides in the

Light

'Twixt dark and light

And lurks in the

Dark

'Twixt light and dark.

And the cloak of

Danger

Is colorless and ragged.

**

And the face of

Danger

Is deceptively sweet

And caring.

And slyly,

It is a good face.

***

Danger has long hair.

But is it a woman?

Or is it a man?

Danger has strong hands

And slender,

Grasping

Fingers.

****

Danger hovers above

The tattered black clouds

And falls

Like a falcon,

Wings furled

Taut and curved,

And snaps them out and drops and snatches with

Talons

And comes like a

Lightning bolt

Made of darkness

Instead of light

And cold, cold

Terror

Instead of electric heat.