The streets are cold, filled with icy caricatures
of empty bodies longing for soullight.
They walk hard, as if they just learned yesterday,
their heavy gaits trespassing on the freezing stones,
leaving shallow footprints embedded in the frost.

An orb of bright light appears and moves through the crowd,
darting here and there, and I can hear it call my name.
The orb hurries past me and I turn to chase after it,
but my feet are frozen to the pavement and I cannot move,
the orb zipping away as I my name disappears on the air.
And there, as I stand in the biting wind clawing at my bones,
the heaviness I feel of a life I could have lived,
I realise with growing horror that that was it,
that was my one chance of having my own soullight
and it passed me by and it was tantalisingly close,
and they say that your soullight only ever visits you once
and it sticks inside you and lights your path forever.
Forever yours, it would say to me in the dreams I had,
can’t wait for us to be together it would say to me.

I guess I’m going to be an icy caricature forever,
walking hard like I just learned yesterday,
no longer longing for my soullight to find me.
Heavy steps in the frost of a cold and lonely world.

The night is immense tonight,
the dark stretching further than I’ve ever seen it stretch.
The gaps between the stars I named for you
are bigger than I ever realised.
And I know all those stars are slowly drifting away,
all those beautiful little points of light will soon be gone,
and one of those stars has gone tonight,
evaporated away because I longed for it too much.
That was the most beautiful star I had ever lain my eyes upon,
but it was always out of reach, no matter how hard I tried
to reach up and pluck her from the night sky
so I could hold her close to my heart and say I love you,
the universe will never let you disappear from my view,
I will protect you and keep you safe in this dangerous place.
But I couldn’t, I left it too late,
and now all the other stars are following suit.
I try with all my strength just to grab one,
but they twinkle and flicker and vanish too quickly.
Soon, the sky will be fat with darkness,
and even the moon will leave,
trailing off into the void of a universe
that never cared for its inhabitants.

There was an idiot a long time ago who said
it’s better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.
These are the words of a man who didn’t love fully,
who didn’t wake up in the morning
and spend the next eighteen hours
in a kind of stupor as thought after thought
of a woman he loved soul-deep
kept running through his head like a slideshow.
These are the ramblings of a man who had
never lost that kind of love,
never had that slideshow on repeat every waking moment,
never saw himself in all the love songs
that suddenly were all about him.

That quote has done a great disservice to those of us
who have loved so deeply and lost that love even deeper,
the soul turned into a bottomless well of limitless proportions.
Light never travels very far down there,
the thick tarry blackness snuffs out all illuminations.
And the echoes of the memories you created
rebound and recoil in the dark, the great voice
of a forgotten earth god trembling all who fall too close,
a hungry, vindictive, spiteful creature
who devours the souls of the dead-but-still-just-barely-alive.
If that’s worse than having never been loved at all,
I’m sorry, but that is a crock of ****.

I’m still in love with that first chance encounter,
the sweet serenade of the forthcoming happily-ever-after,
the diamond twinkle in those emerald eyes,
the morning greetings and the endless chatter of the nights.
I thought it was a dream, but this was never such a thing,
the way my dark soul danced with yours and how our hearts would sing,
a melody that had no words but full of feeling,
the miracle of hope and the effervescence of believing.
I fell in love with your boundless grace and unfettered desire,
the way your burning soul gave way to an even greater fire,
and we burned our bodies and melded our minds together,
and we lived in castles constructed of mist in moors of heather.
My heart is right where it was when we first fell in love,
anchored to your distance and a full moon high above,
and I know you still feel the same from that day long ago,
your voice still sings sweetly of all we have yet to know.

These dark woods are mine alone.
The trails that snake between the trunks
travel in circles and meet up with themselves again.
There’s no way out of these woods of mine,
no friend nor foe to aide my quest,
no fair maiden in a castle keep,
just my lonely old heart begging to die.

These deep woods are mine alone.
The night air is cold and full of water,
its thick blanket allowing me no sleep any more.
There’s no rest in these woods of mine,
no bed nor couch to lay upon,
no young belle to kiss goodnight,
just my tired old head begging to die.

Lord help me, I fell in love,
now I own these deep dark woods.
Lord above, I fell in love,
all alone in these deep dark woods.

You are the Chinese dog howling at night,
you are the Greek bat killer praying for light.
You are the Italian bird flying through the open window,
you are the Thai ghost stealing rice after a bad joke.
You are the Romanian dreaming of dark water,
you are the Lithuanian whistling indoors.
You are the German saying cheers with a glass of water,
you are the Brit leaving your new shoes on the table.
You are the Egyptian hearing the low hoot of a distant owl,
you are the Italian with the owl inside your house.
You are the Icelander knitting on your doorstep,
you are the Syrian playing with a yo-yo in the desert.
You are the Russian gifting yellow flowers,
You are the Portuguese walking backwards.
You are the Hungarian at the corner of the dinner table,
you are the Spaniard walking into a room left foot first.
You are the Brazilian putting your purse on the floor,
you are the Cuban drinking el ultimo.

cut out my heart and feed it
to the wolves howling
for the blood of the
lost boys. sweat out death
and glazed eyes feed
families for eternity.

tick…tock…goes the clock

i am the conjurer of
my own magick, the
spoils of my own war,
the monster
of my own nightmare,
the penitence of my own
sins.

tick…tock…goes the clock

devils in my head and death
chokes my heart, ain’t beating
for you no more.
killed it with silence,
neglect took the soul
from my bones.
c’est la vie, i suppose.

tick…tock…goes the clock

this is my doomsday,
how the sky caves in
more and more, the clouds
look orange like ***** fire.
this is the end
of all ends,
this is my darkness,
******* all.

tick…tock…goes the clock