Like a movie set
A facade
Where Beaver and Wally
Dance with broom sticks
Preparing
To woo the girl of their dreams
All the whilefangs glissen like fine ivory,
June Cleaver’s fangs
Glisten
Like fine ivory
Preparing school lunches
Layered in false promises
And unending night

On this stage
Actors
Stick figures
Cardboard cutouts
Speaking monosyllabic
Affirmations
To Baal
The ending
Always
Ordained

Why read the book?

A terrible battles wages
Between right and what is wrong
Emaciated haloed minstrels
Seeking power for their song

Demonic warriors in night black armor
Evil swords in blackened hand
A Paladin on a golden Chariot
Scarred and tortured
engaged in his last stand

Death struggles
Swords whirling and whining Thanatos’s refrain
On this Island
In this time
Reveals an ancient pain

On this Island
Through the misty veil of time
One lone Paladin on a golden chariot
Alone in epic struggle
Paying eternally for his crime

A single tear is shed
Vaporized by consummate fire
Forgotten water for the dead

I arrive at the appointed place
I stroll amid the rubble
Amid the bodies of suicides and doomed love
It is the place dreams go to die

He flickers into existence
A tall creature
All in black
Raven hair pasted against ghostly white skin
Eyes of fire with teeth that would rend the world.

His hated
Offends me
Always surprises me
It washes over me like waves of crawling maggots
I stagger

He would have me sink to the earth
And offer my throat in submission

There is an ember that always burns in me
Faint, yet insistent
It demands me to KNOW the truth of it
Despite evidence to the contrary
It screams that there is an essential
Dignity to us all.

I will not put words to it
Cheapen it with approximation
Some things are beyond even the poet, the writer, the musician, the painter

Perhaps it’s the smile of a child dying of cancer
Telling his Mother not to cry
That God will take care of him.

The single parent
Sacrificing their life for their child’s

The total stranger running into a building
To save the life of a complete stranger

The warrior using his body to shield
The man beside him
Dying in the process.

It is seldom seen
But when it reveals itself
It blazes like newly birthed Suns
Piercing the dark night of hatred, revenge, greed, self love, advantage.
But it’s there.
I know it

But I had little time for nobility
We circle each other
Two aged adversaries
Long locked in battle
intimately familiar
With the clash of sword

He cocked his head
Waiting for the ritual to begin anew
I smiled and oblige

“Let’s dance mother fucker”

Sleep eludes me.
Sweet oblivion not to be.

The hour of the Wolf approaches.
That tweener time.
Not quite night, not yet day.
It is the time that Demons and doubt hold sway.

I feel the Wolf’s fetid breath tainted
With sin and abomination
As it stalks me
Ready to rend my soul.

Always a step ahead
He is always a step behind
Like death
He stalks us all
Ready to pounce.

The Sun stretches, yawns
And cries in pain.
It screams “why?
Like Sisyphus,
Must I be condemned to this…

Predictability…

Always to rise
Only to set
Again and again.
Will it never end?”

The Birds, the first to rise.
I hear there songs and their heartfelt cries.
Their sounds are so honest, open and true
A sign from The Divine I knew what to do

I began to fade
My ego is lost
I become ONE with the universe
I gladly pay the cost.
A tiny thread
In the universal cloth
Made of silver and gold and shimmering jewelry embossed
I become the song of the birds, the whispering of the trees
The green of the grass and the humming of bees

I turn to face my adversary
Weary of the chase,
My heart pounds blood
Which it would taste.
If I faltered for a moment
It would be the end.
Because if I lost
My soul it would rend.

It snarled:

“Do you know who I am?
The Demon of Despair
Always a bitter end!
Render of souls, the cause of doomed love, and the cause of suicide
I am the dark night of the soul!”

“Humanity is weak, their life so absurd.
There is no God have you not heard?
You search for meaning.
In a meaningless world.
You toil in vain,
In a world full of pain.”

“Abaddon, I cried! I name you thus.
And I come armed with a Poet’s Passion. A Mother’s Love. And help from above.

Did you not hear Faulkner at his Laureate’s address?
“That man will prevail”
Let that put your doubt to rest.

Kierkegaard, Sartre, Kafka and Camus
Shot arrows of truth, which flew straight and true.

Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Liszt
Lifted our souls with music of bliss.

Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky and King
Moved us with passion and gave our hearts wings.

Humankind is not weak it is full of strength and might
Full of simple kindness, love and Light.”

The Wolf howled, raged, spouted spittle and yelped
Snapped at the air with the hatred it felt.

It snarled, eyes glowing with fire and pain.
“It is true that you poets and writers of song can buffer humankind and keep their hearts strong.
Ward away evil and right what was wrong.”

“But I know your heart
It will not always be this strong
I will have your soul
In this I am not wrong”

Sunlight peeked above the horizon
And chased the darkness that held sway
The Wolf turned and strolled on and simply
walked away…

I sighed deeply.
Weary, Oh so weary
Weary of this fight
That rages every single night.

Beware the Wolf
It stalks us all