Encircled by a gray-stone wall, a garden bound in withered thrall,
Its leaden breath by wisteria choked, luster vexed ‘neath its cloak.
Adorned with bells that once were bright, now dulled within the shroud of night,
Its roses drowned in waxen cloud, its lilies doomed by hemlock shroud.

Echoing with ruined laughter, silenced once—forgotten after,
And in the ghost it left a trace, the fragrant scent of sickly grace.
The grass is soaked in miasmic dew, speckled with a deathlike hue,
I stand upon my broken dais, with desolation in my gaze.

A morbid whispered breath abounds, a creeping death over the grounds,
And my crumpled marble aspect stares across this decaying tract.
I watch this garden in disdain, while rot consumes my marble brain,
Left to linger upon my form, where bloodless green and shadows swarm.

A maiden’s tears once kissed my base; her garlands wreathed my chiseled face.
Now thorns her fleeting love erase, and mist enshrouds her resting place.
My name was light, my stone was fair, when flowered bloom perfumed the air.
They’d rest beneath my kingly stare; now none recall what lingers there.

Let ivy bind and phantoms stride, my marble eyes no tears shall hide.
Through endless blight, I’ll keep my throne, a monarch still in ruin’s groan.
No blossom shall rise, nor bird shall call, in this place where silence falls.
And so I wait for time’s sting, here in this garden of withered things.
©️2025

Black silhouettes etch the sky,
Midnight streaking its indigo,
Above the weary maple trees,
Sighing as they bend and sway
To the breeze’s quiet nocturne.
 
Beneath, roots clutch the slumbrous earth
With crooked, unyielding fingers,
Unwilling to release their memories,
While stars flicker—half-afraid,
Their glow too fragile to linger.
 
And I, a shadow among echoes,
Strain for whispers of Sunday dinners long gone,
And fireflied nights dimmed by time’s wear,
While the light of my amber youth,
Wanes beneath a pearly moon.
 
Yet as the faint hues of dawn emerge
Blushing the sky in rose and gold,
To soften the sorrows of the night,
I, though dim, let them dissolve
In the silence of nocturne’s passing.
©️2025

In a forgotten forest glade,
  Beneath the crescent silver eye,
An ancient sentinel casts his shade,
  His emerald cloak, under the sky.

He watches from his solemn knoll
  While the eons slowly decay,
As the seasons turn and take their toll
  And leprous time gnaws him away.

His crooked oaken fingers reach
  Into the boundless twilit air,
Where pale moonlight begins to bleach
  The sky, as silence settles there.

Around his roots, the fauna dance,
  The fleeing, forest-dwelling kind,
Flitting through leaves in a spectral trance,
  Like memories lost to time and mind.

And man—his greatest joy to behold,
  As they recline beneath his limbs,
Escaping the heat out in the wold,
  Their laughter weaving summer hymns.

Yet he mourns over humble man,
  Destined to live out his brief season,
And he weeps for their ephemeral span,
  As their lives flicker without reason.

Burdened with pleasure and misery,
  To watch them grow old and perish—
Each one a fading reverie,
  A moment for him to cherish.

So as man drifts by on tapered years,
  Silent observance is his lot,
Till all their dreaming disappears
  And their memories are forgot.

And yet, this noble oak remains,
  A thoughtful, lonely beholder,
In the forest where his shadow reigns
  Beneath the dome of endless azure.
©️2025

In the blackest hours ‘neath pallid moonlight,
I walk a road, this melancholic night,
To a lonely hill, where the crescent glows—
And the dead lie in eternal repose.

A phantasm of fear entwines my soul,
As I timidly climb this sullen knoll,
Her yearning specter relentlessly calls,
Drawing me nearer those decrepit walls.

I reach a gate of iron, locked years untold,
Set deep in the stone infected by mold,
Savagely battered by a sudden gale,
Rattling like bones under the wind’s assail.

An ancient chain, consumed by leprous rust,
Finally snaps and crumbles into dust,
The gate lurches open with noisome groan,
And I stand to face this horror alone.

Stricken by the chill, cadaverous air,
Reeking of damp earth and lilies of despair,
Creeping forth, past that bleak yawning jaw—
Repulsing me, yet still I feel her draw.

Now my tormented soul begins to seethe,
Her glassy whisper, bids me never leave —
I am seized by fear that I cannot tame,
And shudder as her phantom speaks my name.

Beyond tombstones, moss crusted, cracked and gray
Skeletal wizened willows twist and sway,
Drawing my gaze with their spectral allure—
Towards her open, marble sepulcher.

Far beneath the glow of a lunar gloom,
A scent comes wafting—grotesque perfume—
Carried upon a sallow, misty plume,
As I’m beckoned from within the tomb.

Now the air has taken an icy hold,
My fated undoing starts to unfold,
Through that awful doorway, drenched in shadows—
A terror awaits me, like the gallows.

Crossing the threshold of this marble maw,
I see her visage, my heart, tortured raw,
Gripped by her love, a fatal, binding charm—
As the heavy door screeches shut with harm.

And now, terror racks my inmost being,
While all the vain echoes of my screaming
Flood this detestable mausoleum—
In my frenzied, mortal requiem.

All that lingers now are my maddened cries,
As I’m bound in darkness, and endless night,
With no release from my terrible doom—
To forever haunt this forsaken tomb.

Now alone upon that destitute mound,
In that cold, dark tomb where no screams resound,
A shadowed figure concealed evermore,
Listening for footsteps outside their door.
©️ 2025 David Cornetta

I am drawn beyond repair,
My marbled pillars failing,
And every shallow breath I take—
The ticking of a worn-out watch,
Winding down
until it’s still.
It’s not death that harries me,
But the trifling cares of life—
Fissured webs
beneath my facade,
That weaken my weary frame,
Meant to support
this edifice.
The sleepless debts,
the silence,
Erode the stony structure,
Once defined by rigid lines,
Now smoothed by sandpaper winds,
Marring all former identity.
I cannot tell you how long
Before the coming crumble,
And I’m crushed
under the burden,
Pressing heavy
upon my mind.
Till nothing remains but
the gravel and bone,
of a starved poet.
©️2025

Everything is stagnant.
There’s no sound that flutters,
nor do shadows dance.
There’s no surge of dust
that was caught upon a breath
swirling, before drifting down.
Void of all emotion
or lingering dreams
to still a restless mind.
The walls keep their secrets
and silently observe
this nothing that lives.
Yet within this stillness,
something—almost like a breath—
faintly stirs this static space.
Not quite a presence,
nor a memory,
and yet felt
in the silence,
as if it watches me.
And a pulse, soft and nameless,
crawls dreadfully up my spine
to whisper in my ear
that I am—

alone.

Then, the dust settles.
@2025

The old house loomed, a malignant essence,
Beyond the cracked and weathered way;
It stood ’mid trees with spectral presence,
Still seething under a baleful sway.

Its windowed eyes glared over twilit gloom;
Its whispered dread, a creaking breath,
Sick with its decayed, ghostly perfume
Clinging to walls like lingering death.

Teeming with memories so long forgot,
Of tragedies and ruined love,
Its halls lie dim with mouldering rot,
Below the saturnine moon above.

Something stirred within this derelict manse—
A weeping  wraith arrayed in white,
With gossamer grace and lost romance;
Gleaming under the beaming moonlight.

And watching from the road, I felt a pall;
Splinters of ice crept down my spine,
As the figure, with its cobwebbed shawl,
Turned its sunken, pallid gaze at mine.

She stared at me with her death tarnished eyes,
Mingling with lamentable tones,
Moving about in willowy sighs,
Like wind that weeps through secret poems.

I knew that face—once fair, now pale and blue—
Mantled beneath that ghostly lace;
Her name, that I had once carved into
The oak door of this forsaken place.

Her voice, once a delicate melody,
Is now a banshee’s brackish wail,
Singing her tragical rhapsody,
Like wind rushing through a barren vale.

“O Alice, my sister and friend so dear,
Who burdens my heart with your grief,
By my hand is your phantom bound here,
And my soul is left without relief.”

I turned away in unbridled torment,
And fled beneath those dying trees;
Yet still I can feel her cold lament
Floating nightly on the woeful breeze.

And now, every night, I still feel her eyes
Behind the glass of every pane—
A lasting horror that never dies,
Forever watching me through the rain.
©️2025