I told the stars my pain, but they blinked in disbelief
As if the sky could not conceive a suffering so far beneath
Still their presence offerd a quiet relief

These halls seem somewhat hollow
A certain sense of sorrow
Now graces ancient stone.
Replacing familiar faces
With defaced family paintings
And cold ancestral bones.
Thrones thrown upon a pyre.
Fate becomes the folly
Tomorrow the unknown,
The brows of time are furrowed
Past spent, lost, or borrowed
Flowers forever bloom alone.
Rats, the last lords of ruin
Rule cruel shadows from the walls.
Twilight sighs at daylight's rise
All seems dark till darkness falls.

What in these symbols has power?
None of my letters could build you a tower,
But something within the screen of my phone
Has mass, has inertia, has song, has tone.

Where are the electric lines?
Neither hither nor thither, whichever one signs
But for some reason, I can't help but feel
That my electric lines are something more real.

What are the squiggles that wave from afar?
A symbolic cookie from an imagined jar?
Or are they a prize for forming a speak
That, through my squiggles, may squeak?

The blood comes dilute, as if to refute
What is, or was ever at all
To challenge the must,
The is and the thus
The ever, the will, and the Fall

The Winter, the Spring, the Summer that brings
A freedom, an illusion anew
A time to recline--in dreams and unwind
The idea that you can, that you will

The will, O the will, O the untempered can
Of worms which one opens and finds
Full to the brim, before and again
"Reality"" which tries to unbid

The self from the mind
The meaning from line
The reason from rhyme
And the is from all time

Separates Us: from passion
From Trust.
From belief in ourselves
From love
From true wealth

From magic. From tragic
At least in true measure
Dulling the pain,
But denying the pleasure

The Roar and the Ring
A Hell of a Thing
To make the time pass or
To fill up Your Glass.

~D.B. Guy
August 15, 2011 12:11AM PDT