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Epicedium Poetica

    This subconscious winter

    afternoons of impeding gray

    cold frail will impaled

    stunting eyes and flurried vision.

    Cathedrals chime the unnatural

    here madness flowers in layers of suave

    awareness sleeps on every pew

    trust sold, will thrown in gratis.

    In my misshapen whorl of reverie

    this frozen mind guards ego and id

    shuffling truth to the back of I

    to half dream and half live self

    behind the delusion of morality

    secreting secrets from myself.

    Cast all secret shames to hell

    conceal only misery’s mere

    remember hope, puddled now like blood

    salvage the crimsoned boundaries.

    Watch the child’s shadow now!

    Dark, with wise all cloaked

    Listen, the lie of home’s repast

    where wrought iron tranquility gates

    bring evening a piercing infinity

    of shadowed time playing and replaying

    my heart with troubled beat

    echoing back unwanted years.

    I bask in the empty ether

    of time’s smarting muzzle

    deep as loneliness is long

    and orphaned tears drip.

    For what… for whispery blood

    no one to hear me anywhere.

    the lateness of my enlightened night

    a sad dream, a suffering that is not there.

    Where has wonder gone, young and bold

    under a backyard garden night

    to gaze and dream as sleep grabs hold

    and all the stars high alight.

    MaxS 1995