I awoke one night to a haunted vision

Of many a glowing apparition.

They shone like beacons of ghastly light, -

Polka-dots against the canvas night, -

In numbers I could never count,

In hundreds I dared not surmount,

And merely ambled; hovered, so,

With dark expressions I dreamed not know.

Above, beyond the shadow storms

From whence the rain and thunder forms,

These haunted visions poured as legion

Down upon this wooded region

And wailed their countless, sorry woes

And flailed amidst their deathly throes,

Until I stopped and watched no more

The pangs of suffering they wore

Within their cold and sad demise, -

Within those glowing, brimstone eyes, -

And wept with horror beneath their gaze,

Knowing then what sorrow weighs.

O’ angel, o’ grief-tormented soul,

You who are lost where’re you stroll:

This surf, this land to where you chase

Is nothing more than a woeful place,

And I, the dreamer unlucky to dream you,

Who hath your countenance in view,

Know little as to why you haunt this wood

And cannot help, though wish I could.

My travels led me to a distant path

Surrounded by the devil’s wrath.

It was a lonesome road with a gusty gale

Upon which sunshine had long set sail.

A path of only gloom and despair

And fear hanging in the air.

I wandered further down this route

As my thoughts clouded thick with doubt,

As shadows trailed my every move

Deep in the rocks, in every groove.

In my ears, a slither of voice

Whispered thoughts of sinful choice,

Which led me blind, far down the track

Towards a distant veil of black.

A figment or something truly real,

Corporeal enough for my flesh to feel

A velvet drape of shadows and ends,

Knowing not to what world it sends.

I ventured forth, drew very near,

Watched it ripple, watched it clear .

It led to a chasm, a cosmic Earth,

Vacant of life or human birth.

A desolate grave, a ravaged land

Marked cruelly by a devil’s brand.

Dust, decay and death abound,

Flesh and bone found all around.

Sheets of white from a haunted past

Greeted me as I arrived aghast.

These ghouls and ghosts before me shown

In shrouded forms would wail and moan,

Would pass me by most melancholy,

Old friends, now foes of most unholy,

Far from heaven and its heavenly hand

To wander eternal in a devil’s land.

Spring, come listen to the Summer’s call

that passes by on a whispered breeze,

exhaling warmth like a shallow breath

on the ebb and flow of calming seas.

In hushed tones that sing, it calls for Spring

in lullabies of breaths for it to rest

and to sleep away the quiet days,

Entrusting Summer at its behest.

A season ends, as it always does,

but Spring does languish for a while,

though it sleeps at last, content with warmth,

and disappears on Summer’s smile.

Now singing songs of Spring must end,

like a fading voice just out of reach,

and listen instead for Summer’s call

that beckons forth with quiet speech.

Her fingers,

held high above her head,

stepped delicately between

the wan shafts of light. They

sang of dreams and thrummed

with the rapture of hope.

They danced on shadow.

She watched them pirouette

and waltz amidst the airy

specks of dust. Every

flourish and flick of

the wrist graceful and raw –

passionate and loving.

Each leapt across their shimmering

spotlights and danced like nothing

else in the world mattered,

like nothing ever had.

Only the dust that swam in

the air like starry constellations

against the dark, expansive

backdrop of the tiny closet

and the faint beams of sunlight

that traced their every move.

These shadow dancers and

their dusty stage –

her entire dusty world.

Then, all too soon,

the lights began to fade,

seeping back through the

wooden slats of the door

like the pale ghosts of

moonlight. She watched

them go as all her little

shadow dancers curled

out of sight.

In a dream,

I wandered

to a maw of stone where my

light danced the rocks and my

feet carried deep into the

lonely dark.

Tunnels twisted in the

granite and I walked them

as a pilgrim

lost until I found the

centre of the veins and arteries

in a chamber where water

dripped from wet walls and

cried in the gravel.

A creature lay

shrivelled in the dark, its

form twisted and

bestial and it stared

into the light with eyes dead

and as white as the achromic

bones that shone through its

translucent skin.

A heart

thumped

in a bloodless chest.

A brain

throbbed

in a nerveless head.

The creature shook in the

cold and let out

a pained moan.

I asked of it:

‘will it always ache?’

It did not

hear.

It did not

speak.

It turned its sightless eyes from the light

and raised itself on wasted limbs to limp

deeper into that

lonely dark.

We once danced in that bandstand 

by the park, not minding the chill.

Autumn leaves swept at 

our feet as we stepped

here

and there

and the fog of our breaths mixed

with the incandescence of streetlights.

Your hair glowed in the dark as

it whirled and like a puppeteer

and its puppet,

you twirled from the strings of my arms

lost in the music of the moment,

and I watched the step of our shoes,

one two,

one two three,

afraid to be lost

in the pace of you.

You took hold of my face to gaze with two indigo blues and said:

’it’s okay to be lost

it’s okay to forget

it’s okay to be still’,

and I knew those words to be true.

To be gospel.

We unfurled in that bandstand

by the park and were lost.

We forgot and were still

until the rain clouds filled

and poured free. Heading home,

we ran with

the laughter that lovers laugh,

we danced on the sidewalks

the way lovers dance.

I spun you from my arms with no thread or 

string to hold you and watched you

pirouette in puddles and gutters,

one two,

one two three,

the wide road a stage to be lost in.

I watched you unfurl in the chill of

the rain and in the ghostly

glow of headlights from

a passing car as they poured

over and through you and

you broke the way

a lover breaks,

and you forgot

and went

still.

The pieces of a crumbling ruin

tumbling down to a field of grass.

Pebbles and rocks, a shadow of hail,

splintered wood and shattered glass.

An empty house where no one roams

the gradual collapse of weathered walls,

all fading fast like a tired dream

with memories down darkened halls.

Absent of voice or calls of home,

only decaying rocks and falling stone,

decrepit wood and blowing winds

that groan in silence all alone.

Lost, abandoned and dying slow,

its beauty mirrored by broken glass,

this wasted home now left to memory,

tumbling down to a field of grass.

A night of flickering, crystal lights,

twinkling specks from towering heights

that flutter and flirt like winking eyes;

the star-crossed lovers of weeping skies.

In and out - all glitters and glimmers,

an endless sea of splendid shimmers,

lingering lights that float in the deep,

dangling above a world fast asleep.