When the festivals are over and the roar of celebrations wind down,
I turn myself upon the road that leads out of town.
I venture unto my door, but just before,
I turn my face to the world and beg it to stop changing.
It laughs its usual joyless laugh and then empties a brown bag of spiders onto my doorknob.

I place my hand upon the doorknob,
But it does not twist.
Disheartened,
I peer through the peep-hole in the door.
I cannot discern whether the darkness clouding my sight is from the abyss
Or from the shadow cast by God standing just on the other side of the door.
Regardless,
I once again turn my back to the door
And rejoin the conversation of what awaits us in the Hereafter.

Snow blankets the hills and contrasts with the pond.
Birds sing in ancient Avian and wave in flight.
The fish bump their heads against frozen waters, mouth-agape.
I hum hymns.
Snow crunches under hoof.
Trees stand tall, though ****.
I whistle.
But all of the melodies have been taken.
I try to offer up some original melody for my God-king.
All falls shorts.
Surely He smiles upon my efforts.
I press on.
I follow the river as it bends this way and that.
The deer sees me and pays no mind.
I am walking in the path of eternal light.
And darkness eeks out it's existence in the shadow of rocks.
I find comfort in the frozen sands of December.
A Wesleyan whisper from ages ago crosses my ear.
It speaks of Heaven.
Rushing waters pay no mind to change or tradition.

Grind me with the stone of life;
If I come back,
I come back with understanding.
If not then I am but defeated dust.

I was dead in the morning and gone by the evening.
The vultures feasted.
I laid for hours not knowing I was a ghost.
Haunted features.
Ghost town thrift stores and surf guitars,
These are my delights.
Black deserts and high mountains,
Vaquero of the night.
Sun tanned bones and what have you.
Deep in the heart of Texas.
A lonesome ghost in the South
With nothing but a peyote dream.

I have made sounds that were foreign to my ears
And have laid in strange places.
But as long as the fire remained lit at home,
No matter how dim,
All was well.

I have found myself in places a Christian ought not be
And have friended with those even the devil would shun.
But everloving did the fire burn
Deep in the heart of my home.

The night came when the fire was put out
And there was no one to go home to.
At midnight I was in a drunken stupor.
At dawn I was as pathetic as a newborn babe.

I could not read the music
And so I stood bewildered in the concert hall.
And I do not know why my fiddle mourns a sadly lament.

My guitar sings out danciful tunes
And my banjo beckons all to rejoice.
My mandolin calls with the air of easiness
And my tin whistle whispers with an angel's voice.

But my fiddle,
My poor, lonesome fiddle.
It is full of minor keys
And wrong notes.
Painful melodies
And sorrowful tones.

I killed myself today.
It was too much.
The debt,
The expectations,
The hippies,
The stonefaced
Unsympathetic Vietnam vets asking me if I was a *****.
To tell you the truth, Gus,
You've got to be pretty **** ******* to slit that throat,
To pull that trigger,
To hang that corpse from a rafter high.
But I did it classy.
Yeah.
I died like a Roman who had plotted against great Caesar.
I went home,
Slipped into the tub wearing a suit I pieced together from Uptown Thrift.
As the scorching water flowed,
I sipped wine and read the bible.
King James Version only, mind you.
As the water approached my neck I shut it off.
I laughed at the hypocrisy:
A suicide scene with a bible strewn about.
I muttered,
Then took the knife and opened up my veins.
I bled out.
My thoughts drifted to depressing things:
My 2 year old brother working a night shift at Walmart holding back his tears while being yelled at by a balding middle aged man who never did anything with his life,
A dog corpse ***** and mutilated by some *******,
A banker smoking a cigarette and laughing in an infant's face,
And the world turning on.
As it always does.
As it always will.

Somewhere a clock is ticking
And your brother has passed.
His last words were your name.
He was afraid and in the dark
So he pulled the covers over his head,
Just to get away.

Somewhere a clock is ticking
And your father is gone.
He fought demons and diseases.
He lived in a hellhole for years
While you sought a bottle
Just to get away.

Somewhere a clock is ticking
But you'll never see them again.
It ticks off the years
And the grey in your hair,
It tells you to give in
Just to get away.

They speak loudly and in generalities.
In truth, had they been born 10,000 years earlier,
Neither one would have given the other fire.
A forehead like a Neanderthal's
And a spine full of steel walk into a bar.
"I'll have a Guinness and a mop," sayeth the spine.

Insignificant dust
Swept under a cosmic carpet.
From pharaohs
To the night stockers at Wal-Mart,
Beg the questions asked countless times before.
I tell myself it doesn't matter
Because I'm on the up and up.
I won't be in this place forever
So what's the harm in taking it easy?
Some alternative country song plays on the air;
Singing about nostalgia and the west.
They don't have those things in China.
And here I thought I'd get to start over
In an afterlife with my family.
When I see their lifeless eyes,
I can tell no one thinks beyond themselves.

Of all the things I ever did
And on all the things I held so dear,
Ever all I wanted to accomplish,
To pen a rhyme an Irishman held near.

A song to sing to begin the spring
Or a lament to raise a pint to.
Like rebels before who held the door
So that we could march right through.

And many will say I am not in that way,
Born on Erin's emerald isle.
But my heart's as green as e'er been seen
And my heritage I cling to all the while.

Life thus far has been but naught;
Rife with torment, tears, and fraught.
And ever on my soul does step
Around the bend and gently swept
To a greener plain both bright and fair,
No more to tread a boggy chare.
To familiars close and kins away,
To God's green Heaven is where I stray.

I'd kick a can as far as I could,
But I'm as empty as the thing and it does no good.

I'd smash the glass after I finished my beer,
But the shards would scatter, like my heart, I fear.

And who would clean up the mess?

I smile at the pretty girls and introduce myself,
But they see my belly and grey, so I go back on the shelf.

There is a girl; Scots-German and holy,
But my brother pursues her and I am not worthy.

And who would clean up the mess?

I'd drink up the ocean and die belly up,
But the sea would refill from when I erupt.

I've scaled my last mountain and caressed my last *****,
But, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I crossed all my chasms.

Got to give up that ghost.

Merrick, was he
And now farmer.
The ghost of the Euridi wars
But now simply father.

She gave unto him Ilo
And then passed.
A treasure from her *****.
For what more could he ask?

The grey in his hair
And the wrinkle upon his skin.
As his daughter kissed his cheek
He thought not of past sin.

Ilo sang as the angels
And glided with beauty.
But her sickness had doomed her
To waste away rudely.

Traveller Nner spoke of
Arcadia and the four ghosts of God.
Far away, over mountains
Plagued by demons and monsters odd.

Ilo can live again,
Warrior-farmer-father.
Across the desert, ocean, and mountains
Do not falter.

Staff in hand,
Upon Kerona he rides.
Eastward towards the ghosts
With Ilo's body by his side.

Dragon of desert lands,
From the sand to the sky, fly
Breathe of fire, brimstone
A war through the night.

Cut deep
The flesh of the fire breather.
For your daughter Ilo's soul
Hangs in the ether.

Victory and blood
But her body lies still.
No gain from this battle.
Only sorrow and hatred to feel.

Forward to the ocean,
To the lair of the giant serpent.
The one who drinks up the waters
And will not relent.

The mighty beast,
He steals away Ilo's body.
To the floor of the earth,
Beckoning Merrick hotly.

A foul beast has stolen
The body of my daughter.
Merrick breathes in all the air
And follows after.

A war under water,
Flesh and blood in twain.
****** into the belly of the beast.
A nameless grave.

Burst forth from the entrails,
Ripped, bitten, and torn.
Another beast overcame.
Another victory, though forlorn.

He holds her body
And her head against his.
A tear he permits.
His life would he give.

To the forests of Zalvest
To the lair of evil.
Black magic awaits
To unravel his meddle.

Trickery of the mind,
Manipulated with horror.
Recalling the gruesome battles of Euridi
And comrades lost to war.

Blinded by fear,
By the demon wizard of Zalvest.
How helpless he feels.
Lay the ghost to rest.

Acceptance of sin,
Parting with guilt.
A wizard rendered weak,
The evil-willed welps.

To the four ghosts of God
Atop the mountains of Arcadia.
Breathe life to Ilo
I have bested the sons of Echidna.

Not ghosts of God,
But of the devil.
A sacrifice for a life,
A hero laid low to their level.

And Ilo is raised,
Her breathe is now her own.
With his parting words
His love is shown.

On a night in December
In a pale stricken grey,
Laid beside my Isabella
In a dark winter's embrace.

As the moon shone down
To our valley below
Surrounded by the trees,
Where frost did grow.

Where we loved like wild creatures
And cared not for the outside world.
In our utmost feral delight
Our lust had unfurled.

And there was no grief
Nor sorrow or tear stricken eye.
Just the trees, the snow,
My Isabella and I.

A man who had lived his life in D Minor,
This man whom life had given a shiner,
Humbled and begged by the all night diner.
And spoke of a woman, how he nestled beside her.

His beard was stricken with soot and grey.
So grey that none could love it away.
Not to the color of amber of the fields that sway.
For the lips he had kissed had been led astray.

He spoke of forgiveness for a woman's misdeeds
And how her eyes were as blue as the seas.
To love often and treat hate like disease.
I could not outgive what he imparted to me.

You would cause as much damage, too,
If your love was ripped from you.
You would beat mercilessly on rooftops and rain
As much as the world could hold and remain.
You would tear families and loved ones apart
Just like she stole, from your chest, your heart.
But even your most gentle touch, when beginning anew,
Would cause heartache and crush marrow and sinew.

Down amongst the sorrows,
Amidst the muck and mire,
Where naught and trouble grows
And love waits to expire.
Where a lover's blue eyes
Can quickly turn black.
There, love is a lie
You can never retract.

Down amongst the sorrows,
Where I found myself ensnared,
I felt as if the gallows
And rope await me there.
But the executioner's smile
Was as beautiful as the sea,
For the hand that held the rope
Was of she that once held me.

When last I had seen merry England
It was tattered with midnight soot that beckoned the denouement of the human condition.
Begrudgingly, the people meandered with heads held low
And dreams held lower.
The simplest way to determine the societal standings of each and all was by their clothing; save that all of their dispositions were ones of the played out and spent.
Happiness lay mountains, valleys, oceans away.

Aboard this great ship,
This hulking bumberdun of wood and steel,
I felt at ease.
Even upon these hostile tides did I feel an unraveling away of the self imposed mummifications that I had attached to myself.
I arose when I pleased,
I dined when I pleased,
And I drank as I pleased.
And not one such "captain" ****** himself with the responsibility of slavedriving.
No one had to.
For the man that suaded the great ship was John Franklin,
A man who commanded as much respect as we could muster.
And who deserved more honor than existence could give.

Franklin was never seen out of form,
Perpetually at the fore and scanning the horizons
Seemingly as if he could see beyond what that of a mortal man could,
What that of a mortal man should.
When we happened upon the mouth of the passage,
Naught but a slight smile escaped him
As the crew drank and shouted with jubilant glee that one might expect from a cathedral when the Lord Almighty had fell upon that place.
For this was Franklin's church
And this was his religion.
Had he believed himself to be God it would not have seemed so far fetched that others would not be led to believe.
But then a tear,
A small and just single tear,
Lazed from his eye
Leaving a trail that one might expect from a dove with no concrete destination.
A hush fell over the men.
All merry making ceased.
All stared in wild-eyed awe towards the regal, icy mountain ranges on the horizon.
Lush, full meadows blanketed the grounds along the mainland.
Whatever paths we had followed to this point were routes well cut.
The sadness,
Sorrow,
Joy,
And loss,
All things fell by the wayside.
Some men prayed,
Others began singing.
Regardless of religious preference,
Each man joined in,
Not so much singing as it were wailing and graciously weeping Amazing Grace
As Franklin led the choir.

God is a mountain in the farthest north of the Americas
And Heaven lay in his valley.

Where the cars are packed so frightfully close,
And billows of smoke do crowd and encroach.
There my love went to sow wild oats,
And that is just fine with me.

Where the troublesome buildings grow tall and wide
And the businessmen march in single lines.
To where my love left my heart and mind,
And that is just fine with me.

Upon my hill I fiddle and sway
And watch from afar the toil and strain.
For now my love is miles away
And that is just fine with me.

Love is not a lightning storm,
But a delicate, brittle flower on the crest of a far away mount.
It must have it's moments in the free sunlight
And also in the shadow of the understanding and low hanging cloud.
From time to time it must be whispered to
About it's once and future beauty
And about how a lonesome drought can be a blessing.
But most of all
It must know that when it's first petal falls,
Will that moment fail to show an abscence of my eternal love.
And all I ask is that you let your rain run down from that mountain
And upon me.
So that I might feel your pain,
Delight in your delights,
And suffer in your sorrows.
Because I am the mountain on which you grow.
And I am the wind that will never blow cold.

For as much as I have tried to survive the wilderness,
It has also tried to survive me.
Because I have trampled over the oceans and forests,
I have lost the privilege of the tree.
No air is there left to fill my lungs,
I now breathe in only nightmares.
No longer are there fish in the stream for my belly.
I simply eat whatever I dare.
I have robbed the woods of their sweet pine smell,
Replaced with only the scent of death.
Our children grow weak and sickly these days;
Their laughter is happiness bereft.
My ancestry was paid no mind,
I simply carried on with my plight.
To Christianize this land,
To bind the wild man,
I was blind to God's true light.

Let not love blind thine eyes,
Sheath the heart,
And fickle the mind,
For these are the cruelties of mankind,
To live without and leave behind.

Love let not the ties that bind,
Break with but the strength of twine,
Nor gain false hope or discern the mind,
To save the soul or be lost for it's time.