Shades of Grey-- Two Strangers and a Friar

And though the voice of hardened time

Like echoes fill forgetful hearts in shades of grey

Still our hearts beguile our listless minds

Coming for us, all of us, who dare to break the silence

The dead of night envies us, you see

What is this place among the shadows scratching at our calves like dogs of war

We must flee from here at once! Can't you hear them?

Beckoning our shoulders trodden, beaten the core

Waiting for first light to shred our flesh with every horrid machine employed

Moonlit paths reveal what once beheld a gauntlet's pride

Ride north for now--force the stones to carry forth

And stain my master's eyes at hollow halls and empty sinking shades of grey

These are not mere dogs of war, old man

But more the Hounds of Hell

Wheresoever greed and lust and hatred go, they will, in great haste, follow me

Leave then your sins and take this staff

Let not your heart be troubled, Sir

Forget the past and hide your ears from piercing echoes' endless haunting

Walk as men of fortress do, as sons of lords

And daughters of Elysium in their gowns of flowing white

Let your burdens be absolved and crush the Hounds beneath your heel, my youthful friend

Foolish friend, these words you speak are merely feathers on the wind

What benefit's bestowed upon your head

By heaping troves of pungent shite into this endless heart of cold and heartless Sage?

Mock the toils of wisdom come to seek

The dusk of myths and truths and what's to come

A darker path is known by these untethered shades of grey, for they have seen pure hate

The shades of reckoning, foolish one,

Which dot the maps of life's worst-chosen roads

Left splintered, every fingernail which claws at life's unguarded throat to no avail

When in such youth already life and love and sorrow

Plagued a tempered heart and tore its chest apart

like tapestries of tonic, milk, and mysteries; torture, broken glass, and shattered dreams

Silence!

Who calls within the depths of solemn shadows

Ever creeping in the grey?

There beneath the sylvan scripts, with hands swift pressed to ears, offended he's

Are you both as deaf as all these sylvan seats among the pews

Where even dust mites bend their many knees

In fervent reverence to the Lord of all beneath us and above? I said Silence!

I do not cover up my ears, but verify their continuance

For fear they may have packed their things, detached, and run away

Per stead to hear another syllable-- embittered, trite, inconsequential words as these

Two fools I see before me spitting nonsense in the night

One who runs escaping death, another running to it

And what a blessing my reward to witness such as this within these hallowed holy walls

If the breath of each dispels

At any length the substance of such words I hear

Then I have won a true reward that at this distance we remain

Wasted weeks and years of men

Who plan in spite of God's intent to fill his numbered days

Ill regard and shattered dreams of poets lacking strength to test their nerves

More to seek the breath of God

But stand against His will in times of need

And seek to earn by lurk and lore the senseless tolls, these deepest shades of grey