The words were never ours,
Sentiments and sentences
Sediment from fallen stars.
Spoken once upon the start
Before concepts were a concept
When all was nothing,
All was dark.
Before dark was a thing,
Or no thing,
Before meaning had meaning,
Or a universe to dream.

Suddenly.

Like an almighty sneeze,
Came space and time and similes,
Metaphors, mistakes, and mystery
Supernovas, hangovers, hyperbole
All within the blink of an eye.
(Yet to be created)
The words were solid, stoic, patient
Content to spend eternity waiting
Forever fated to play the patron
Of a thousand dying worlds.
Until such time you called its name,
Until the first time it was heard.

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.

So another morning creeps,
Light leans around mountains.
Peeks surrounded by pastel clouds,
Sky becomes the canvas
To frame and then enchant us
Forever from our reach.
Allowed but a moment's peace
Far cry from warring reefs,
Seas of ire, oceans of grief.
The shore seems so sure
Till it breaks beneath our feet.

A world slowly woke from slumber
Stumbled through a sense of Deja Vu.
Free from sheets of sleep and dreams,
Borrowed stitches pay the seams
Of patchwork quilted promises,
Forgotten threads of make believe.

In the shadows of stone mountains
Down a fragile ancient road,
Past streams and dreams of glory
Lay a leader bathed in gold.
Haunted by the battlefields of his youth
The forgotten weight of halos old.
A poltergeist of progress
Found downed outside the zone.

Cast off by players unknown
Pretenders covet the Apex throne,
Where Aculites fight like demons
Exorcising respawn beacons
Necromancers in the Thunderdome.
While Tom seems indisposed,
Locked up and throwing rocks
Mocked by the gulag and the snow.
Though we really should have known
The esteemed leader was on his own,
His chute just would not open
Slowmotion to the sound of Chopin,
Commander falls just like a Stone.

The evening seems to sing,
Choirs composed by currents
In obscure keys of humidity.
A lone songbird takes the lead,
Percussion provides ensemble trees.
While the very air we need to breathe
Suffocates, stifles, tries, and succeeds
To bleed the breath from laden lungs.
Throat pleads, begs, and bargains
To demi-gods and heathens,
Deities and demons,
Every creature beneath this sun.
Let this molten grip
Slip
If just for a note,
A beat,
A pause from the pressure.

Silence is a treasure
To be savoured not measured.
Sweet cadence of relief.

There was something in the air that night
That lent itself to magic let the stars shine bright.
While the light of ageing suns fight to be
The one that might ensnare our sight.
Midnight binds the heart to minds
As minds forge constellations
Carved slight on the evening sky.
Those lines cast in stone
By worn hands long ago,
Tempered in the crucible of time.

Before we reach those warring stars
Or trespass on a wandering Mars.
Before we waken Saturn's rings
Or question Jupiter's reason to be.
Before we knock on Neptune's door
Or wonder if Pluto is rock or more?
The Moon seems to have taken flight,
Conspicuous by its absence
It slipped out of sight
Assured of its command
The master of the night.