Survivor's Guilt

Meaningless streams of water

Writhe like living ropes

Made of glass (how very strange!)

Across the gray linoleum tiles.

The light fades in this room

To match the captured

Ancient light in photographs.

Time itself must be confused by this.

Two tears and some dominoes fell:

The aborted start

Of an imagined design...

A line that would never be finished.

Meaningless streams of water...

(Am I not human?)

Pulsing through vein and vessel...

And we all know humans die like flies.

Demon Hunting

We fall inside a sphere of masquerade and fear,

Streaked blood and dust all through, like little walls

Built of vanishing cards and formless souls.

Insistent and persistent lies, I idolize;

Above all else I worship any proof

That lies are real, more than the ugly truth.

And gladly death would take me in his purple hand

And squeeze me till I bled like warm, fresh juice

Into his cup. Look up; there's no excuse.

Full twenty thousand years, and half that time spent lost,

A laugh cracked out, unnoticed, edged, serrated.

Those who can hear it now are overrated.

An eye turns upward glinting like diamond facets:

Cold, wet, made of white marble with red veins...

And devoid of all that heals or sustains.

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.