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