his farewell

I slit my wrists and let them bleed
to pour out all my pain
The red pool gathering upon my feet
won’t wash away with rain
My tears never stop
They cascade down my face
It is time to take the toll
And pour my life down a hole
Never looking back
Never regretting it
Give away my soul
It is broken
Painted black

Sometimes in despair I worry

Forget what is unpleasant
Ignore what bothers you
Don’t think about the madness
That has accompanied our fall
But the murder of a few
here and there
cannot be ignored
The ravens see it all
Even if our mind’s won’t deplore
They remember
They remember
Some people ignore this world
Try to exist some way
Some still hear a call
Some still wear the veil
Waiting for the groom to come
Even though we fail
In despair I worry that
Jesus won’t come back
seeing all we’ve done
There’s no hope for us
We’re worse than when we’d begun
Why bother to try when
there is so much that can’t be cleaned
And the one who can by his blood
just won’t
We cannot go back
The ashes of the ovens of humanity
Pouring out of smoke that kills
We stopped wondering
We just die and we choke

Kristallnacht

9,10 November 1938
The night of broken glass
Kristallnacht
From a spark went a flame
Hatred knew few bounds
From throwing stones and rocks
To hunting Jews with Hounds
Violence in the street
Pure condensed hate
Anti Jewish pograms
Seeking to exterminate
Seeking to eliminate
"Lebensunwertes Leben"
Nazism the disease
Without a curative answer
Hatred is the cause
Hatred is the cancer

Bound by you

You are a kiss upon my lips
A razor to my wrist
A dance before dying
The truth before lying
You are music to my soul
Bells that never toll
But I still can’t see my way
I still can’t get away
From the pains of existence
My body resists breath
My dying aging flesh
So I can’t run to a new place
Death holds me in tender embrace
You hold the key
In your hands
To the lock upon my chains
Will you set me free?
Will you take the chance

They

They live in the forests
Dark but filled with light
They dance in the meadows
Under the moon, in deepest night
They live in the shallows
In the deep where it is cold
They live in the glens
Untempted like man for gold
They live without guile
Without desires for things
They sit upon rocks and idle
While singing
About glorious beauty
We should be more like them
We should throw away
All of our discontentment
But we won't,
such a shame

(Art by Edwin Austin Abbey and Alan Lee, no copyright infringement is intended)

Return to the Mountains of Madness

There was nothing that could have stopped them
They were not of this world
We were sent to discover things
Not to die as meat or sacrifice
Their voices will haunt me
The rest of my existence
More than the cold or ice
I am frozen inside
Their voices were unintelligible
Their screams were inhuman
And there is only death and horror
Remaining, my memories remain
The horror relives again
In the cold there was no comfort
The voyage long and soaked in rain
But I returned to Arkham
Fighting to remain sane
Unsuccessfully

Poem by William Dyer



SOURCE



Following the paper submitted by William Dyer, professor of Miskatonic University’s disastrous Pabodie Expedition to Antarctica in 1930–31, numerous attempts have been made to ascertain the depth of veracity in the paper. Unquestionably there is something that happened, but what exactly we are uncertain. So it is with some excitement and hope, that we announce that we intend to send a new expedition, armed well, and with the most modern of equipment...

Terminal Evidence Of Life

We fall down, crying
Remembering our lives
Seeing them dying
Who are we to think
We are anything more
Than the dust that blows
Through the final door



Every death is a moment of time
We forget who we are, as the clock unwinds
We see ourselves as fading
We dream of our past
And the dead live inside us
As we forget to live
This world begs our favor
But we relinquish that fate
Our destiny too foreboding
Our dreams we savor
Our greed insatiate
We fear our lives will fade
Disappear, stop
Quicker than they took to create




We are the living
Though we rarely live but exist
We are the present
But the echoes of the past persist
We are the future
God help me to see
Life is more than insisting
Or resisting our fate
It is a jubilee

Berezina, Frozen river of blood

The empire of France
Was defeated in Russia
Napoleon’s system
No longer insured epic victory
Defeated at last
The genius general failed the task
Defeated, but not by any single action
But by all of them
Weather, war, distance



The prize of victory lured
But the difficulties of the task
Destroyed the ability
To endure
To retreat without hope
To be cast out from Russia
In the worst of its seasons
Winter froze the country
By early November
And the hunger
And despair
And fear
Trapped them there



Before the river Berezina
Normally frozen
Now strangely thawed
To escape miracles were needed
The toll of human pain
Cannot be assessed
But 40,000 died
Now in permanent rest
In the flows of the river
Berezina



Russian cavalry pursued
The remnant invasion force would flee
Berezina still flowed
Was a cold lonely burial place
Indeed

A Poet's funeral

watching the pyre light
watching the flames rise
smoke and life fled remains
the skies blacken again
from our man made storm
we say good bye to a friend
the pyre begins to burn
the flames rise and churn
crackling embers and sparks
he lays there, peacefully
and finally the flames make their mark
and in moments his flesh is gone
he returns to where he was all along
in our memory
not the charred flesh we see
now

This is England

Whether arch villain possessed of anger
Or anti Christ has ascended to threaten
Black bright, loud, avian messengers
Calling, telling, empowering
Alert us to the Crusade ahead
England shall never fall to foreign invader
So long as there dwells ravens at the Tower
Powerful emissaries of life
Bringers of the portents of death
We must not ignore them
Or our flesh and lands will die
Rising from our decay
The Ravens call upon us to live
Bringing wisdom from the ancient days
Telling us to be humble, telling us to be great
For they are gifted with sight given by the Gods
We are heroes fighting the tide of Saxons
We are common folk
Joined in desperation in the evening hour
Rising to defend our country from the Blitz
With little more than flesh and sweat and hands
We are England, and the Ravens are in the Tower
For now, and ever, this is our land

Unheard Prayer

I wrote a prayer today
In it I gave up
I didn’t send it out
No one would hear it
Anyway
God is perfect and so great
I am rotten and alone
If could stop this hate
Of my life,
My tragedy,
My own
I wouldn’t have to pray
I could die alone
But I am not so great
And I am so cold
God please don’t be mad
Please don’t take away
The only dreams I have
The ones where I’m not sad
When the ravens fly away
It’s time for me to say
I am ready to just die
I am ready to take my place
Let me go today
No one will cry

Forgotten

A band of bandits, brigands and orcs
Raided a small village, and torched it
Beyond the thatched roof buildings
And the severed heads upon pikes
They kidnapped several children
And retreated to their lair
Humans tried to fend off the invaders
Invader numbers strained the defense
Soon they' broke, being crushed
By the time they gathered courage
The raiders were gone from view
Missing from the horizon
In the marshes the tracks were lost
Years later, the wounds still bled
For most of the adults had been killed
Survivors of the raid
Settled wherever they'd stopped
Rather than hunt down the invaders
They now had tried to simply exist
They learned to enjoy life
Where they could
Accepting their lot in life instead
Four decades later
A raiding party of the human tribes
Found the original lair
Of the orcs and brigands
Slew them in brief combat
In battle where odds were not fair
And in the depths of the cave compound 
Among the treasures and relics recovered
Were corpses of many children
One was chained to a chair
Waiting for rescue, she died
Her corpse remaining behind
Without hope, or contact
From a tribe nearly destroyed
Forgotten by her own families
And praying for a rescue
That never arrived

Revealed

Fear them, release them
Believe the words of steel
You are worth more
Than you'll ever know
Trust and believe
The truth will be revealed

The Screams Solve Nothing

The bleeding never stops, a torment within
Life has time limits, but pain still remains
My sleep cannot heal these deeper wounds
Hiding from the daylight due to the chagrin
I'm dying, no hope inside, as I enter oblivion
Fear is blinding, my dreams leave me crying
The nightmare of my existence, lives on

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt,
if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”  Charles Baudelaire

Defender

“Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.”  Plato

No machine, however efficient it is, hates the one it kills
No religious belief justifies the slaughter of innocents
Cold steel armor, tungsten blades, or A.I. of any form
Can't replace love and hope that has been instilled
We must teach that love should make one vigilant
To defend the orphans and widows, shout a warning
To those intent upon the harming or killing of another
To know that there are some lines we must never cross
Now or ever for morality cannot be left to the moment
Good and evil are traits that are not ambivalent
Let it be that justice becomes your highest calling

The Burning

I couldn't close my eyes fast enough
As the flesh ended
Life was rescinded
By higher powers
My soul unable to act,
Handcuffed
My kindred stolen
Stolen from my clutch
My loved ones extinguished
What matters now
Is release
Vengeance and hurt are tools
Of the ignorant
And though I am that
Indeed I am
I long to be better
So I believe

Our God Science

Within its hands
Life is its own murderer
And I refuse to be its martyr
Life is only worth losing
If life was worth living
The cost is far greater
To die
If life is worth keeping
We should be able to see
Still, you are the torchbearer
Keeper of the global order
Leaving behind the ruins
Refusing to be forgiven
Denying the creator
In a lie
Listen to the screaming
Think nightmares are dreams
We've entered a cursed place
Where ignorance is thought
The highest virtue
Heaven traded for oblivion
 We've become the disease and distaste
Lying about the destruction we've wrought
Depending upon science to nurture
The beast we've become

burning glance

Your glance was cutting
My flesh was bleeding
Deep inside I desired
Only you
Like a rose bush budding
I grew but
I stopped breathing
Therefore how burned this fire
I bid you adieu
Now I am nothing again
Now I see darkness that remains

Shitty Motel Room Rant

It all happened differently than I’d dreamed
But I never dared disagree, with all that seemed
Staring at the ceiling laying on a mattress in winter
My motel room is cheap and I shivered
Covered poorly with blanket of fear
For the words I heard from you lips tear away the years
What is there of living if there is nothing left
What is there of me if my heart has been cleft
Into two broken pieces and the tears pour down
What is there to seek if the object doesn’t exist
Except in memory in lingering misery
I begged your indulgence and got a foot in the face
I begged your forgiveness, blood was the taste
In my mouth
My dreams had all flown South, I drove all the way with all I had
Only to find that my car was dead, my dreams were fleeting
My faith was still strong but the object I was seeking was gone
Never existed maybe, gave me false hope of something all along
Fallen dreams never mend but they function the same anyway
Now I am weary without rest
But she wouldn’t know for to her I do not exist
She wouldn’t care for my dreams persist nonetheless

I am unable

How am I supposed to lead my son to wisdom
When I am flawed to my very core
How am I supposed to teach and live in peace
When the world wages war
Who is able to rise above
When this world is broken
Who is the one, who will reach out in love
With love so flowing
Because it isn’t me
I am emptied of everything
It isn’t me and won’t be me
Despite my love for him
We have a green and blue planet
Polluted to be grey
We have a wonderful place to live
That we’ve filled with hate
I want him to be different
Than me or anyone
But how can I teach him
When all I believe comes undone
There is no blame in me
I am not pointing fingers in rage
I am simply asking
Who knows the way
I don’t know the way
No one knows the way
He was born into a generation
Innocent of our crimes
But they were swimming
In the dangerous tides
In another generation’s moral debt
From the wages of our culture wars
And terroristic threats
Building and killing
Taking without giving
How can we lead anyone
When you or he
Can see how we are living

LA FIN DE L'AFFAIRE

This is not about my life, this is a metaphor for an event, and the passing consequences that followed. I am not the speaker, I am taking the voice of the speaker, it is fiction.

I met with loneliness
After the affair
When I realized
There was no one out there
And never would be
However it might be unfair
The love in my soul was harvested
Made to be my flaw
Turned against me
Relentlessly
By someone who said they cared
What is my life for
But to share in love
What is my heart to do
If not be true
But there are pigs at the trough
Who take more than their share
Over and over my heart was robbed
Because it was open
And unaware
That people like her existed
That people like her could say
They’d love me forever and leave
Because I could never compare
To those who she could meet
Every place everywhere
But now I see
Despite a thorn in my eye
I cannot see
Through your disguise
I will never be
The one you want
So thrown away
With my life you haunt
My every move betrayed

THE KING OF LIARS

My words are that of a King
The King of Liars
I am the King of a Kingdom
Filled with love and desire
To serve my people, here,
From my throne in this Asylum
They pad my throne in good trust but
They don’t let me write with pencils or pens here
So I use my bloody fingers upon the walls
They don’t give me paper due to the chance of cuts
But I bleed anyway
Then they wash my words away
With blast hoses used for fires
The straitjacket holds me as if I might fall
But the real straitjacket is inside
Where I am held aloft by tether wires
To make sure I do not drown
In their world I am paralyzed
And I scream without sounds
I see things that do not exist
I hear voices that surely insist
That the place I am here
Would be better off
With me deceased
And I cannot resist
The lure of the shallow grave
Once empty but now I am saved
By its welcoming comforts
By its solitary love instead of hate
By its empty bed
Welcomes me living and
Still I crave despite my survival
To be someplace else, instead
My arrival was unheralded
My passing will be unreported
For I solely long to be
A King of a Kingdom
Away from this happy place
This living wound
This Asylum

new poem: Thrust of Blame

They thrust
Blame upon me
I am shamed by their voice
But I never did what they say
I cannot escape their views
Or faulty memories
I can never be the same
Just a moment of trust would go nicely
To soothe the wounds they’ve opened
On me
A moment of trust so distant and lost
They won’t let me be, again
I am broken beyond repair
Blame upon me
Shame upon me
I could explain but it doesn’t matter
They’ve as much as framed me
They’ve judged me as being wrong
And it doesn’t matter a damn
Truth is trumped by anger
Over and over again.

Worship

Let me linger in your presence
Let me pour upon you love
Let me embrace your scent
Let me try to be worthy of
Your being,
So perfect, so magnificent and sweet
Let me be in your gaze
Let me fall at your feet
Sworn to your service,
Being always and ever amazed
Knowing that I was born
Exactly to be with you, so serene,
And to serve such a beautiful being
Make me see things I’ve never seen
I am so common, you are unique,
You share your essence
With all who desire
You are the comforter,
You are all that I seek
Let me be washed in your perfume
So that when apart you accompany me
I bow before your throne
Let me be yours endlessly.

The Massacre of Babi Yar

Click upon image for better detail of words and image.

Auschwitz 1945, Nazi terrors

Abandoned City

image and words copyright alex ness 2008

Above the carnage and pyres

(It might be a scientific fact that Ravens do not fly in darkness, but I was imagining when I wrote this a moment when the battle is done and all that remains are the Ravens aloft watching, and perhaps the moment is unusual, and the Ravens are so enraptured that they do not realize the darkness of night. So if it bothers you to think of them doing what they might not do, then think of it as fiction, which of course, it is.)

in the snow, in the twilight

Wolf Cub's First Winter

In the wood, the solemn place
Where the trees fallen don’t permit
Snowfall to get deep
The gentle moans of cub
Waking, from her sleep
Covered in a blanket
Of freshly fallen snow,
So cold, so pure,
Covers where she laid
She shakes her head
Sprays off the flakes
And hops across the floor
Of the forest white
And hunts for food
To celebrate the day.

Har Meggido

Please click the image, so the words can be read more easily. A mountain and pass, famous for ancient battles, gives its name to the end times, Armageddon.

Haiku: Sakura

Like a Lion

Some men enter battle
Knowing they'll not return
Some men are sheep being led
Some men are chattel
But in others battle burns
Perhaps living or dead
They'll return

Leather Apron

Even eyewitnesses are wrong
Stereotypes can fail to be true
Even if you believe them
Myths are often misunderstood lies
The way is long long gone
The police eventually knew
Even if Jews are in a den
And butchers covered in flies
Leather apron was not the ripper
But eyewitnesses believed he was
Many bodies laid dead
But he was not the cause

Towton Slaughter

The York longbows
Cast arrows after arrows
Plunging deep in the chest
Of the Lancasters
Slaughter without relent
The counting of the dead
An afterthought
The Lancasters of the Red
The Yorks of the White
Met at Towton
Though the Lancasters held the heights
A blizzard of snow
A mid Afternoon sun
The Red eyes became blind
And could not stand safely
Upon the ridge
They marched down
Where the Yorks stood
The day was March 29th
The year 1461
28,000 were to die
Snow turns red
The blinded Red
Entered defeat
Edward of the White
Henry of the Red
A White victory
Tactical collision
Crimson catastrophe
Axes and Longbows
Armor and shield
Soon the river nearby
Bled
With the currents
Carrying away
Melted snow
And lifeblood

Needleman

Yeah I know, you can knock me out with a feather
Chain me with a red ribbon of a birthday package
I've been killed by those words, and angry looks
Cutting myself with a blade for the pleasure
Trapped me inside by that rotten old adage
My hope can be found in pages of books
I'm afraid to live and too scared to die
I refuse to forgive, I don't even try
Slap me, break me, or hurt me
Kill me, take away this pain
The clean needles are free
Ah the poke in my vein
Did you know
I am not sane?
Can you even see?
I'm so cold I shiver
And finally sleep
Riding the horse
Into dreams

Tall Grass

Dressed for a social outing, the children found the tall grass so beautiful.  Others might call it weeds, or simply some grain.  But a child can see purpose in the random, and can see beauty in things others ignore.  There is a perfection and glory in what they see.  They see God's hand in the core.  Every thing they know, every thing they see, comes from a place adults forget, a sin they can never repent, knowledge and wisdom for us all, has a cost far too great to portent. 

Youth is not wasted upon the young.  Innocence is lost in adults who are forced to know dark truth.  And it starts when you are but one, against all others.

The Vulgar God

And there before our wide eyes we saw it
A vulgar and perverse god
Surrounded by servants
And beautiful dancing girls
He could not be satisfied
His hunger was relentless
And his anger when withheld from consuming
Beyond measure
Somehow we needed to kill him
But he was in control of everything
Here in his lair
Our wits were the only thing he didn't control
And the beauty of those dancing girls
Affected our wits by their share
This problem required a solution
That wasn't guns
But brains

Easter Island's Uglier Cousin

We spent years in flight
What could we have hoped for
But knowledge and discovery
We were broken from the time
Sleep drunk and exhausted
Bodies weak without the sun
And only artificial light
And yet
Here we are
Disaster looms
We followed the signal
It beckoned us to come
And we find artiface
Massive monolithic heads
All seem to offer doom
But instead we try
We investigate
Maybe these were fashioned
Made to give some message
But we've so few left of our number
We better find the answer
Soon