Roll Call of the Lesser Devils 112-114

112.
Songs From The Edge

When you’ve lost all hope,
And your last chance slips away,
Optimism dissolving into the air,
When no caring words are left to say,
Look into my eyes, look deep within,
Look and cry despair.

When the sun in the sky
Cries wistfully farewell,
But the stronger storm rages on in your mind,
Turn all your sails,
To the west turn your sails
To chase the last rays to a personal hell,
To repay life’s unkindness in kind.

Are you seeking the comfort of another soul,
In the hush of a lazy afternoon,
While over head the rain falls to hearts of stone,
And the rainbow flows cold like the northern lights,
In the cruel embrace of the earth mother’s hate,
At the end are you all alone?

When the green of the world at last turns to black,
And the blue seas finally run red,
Stand on the edge of insanity,
Stand and sing despair
All that is left
For humanity.

Sing to the children
Who are cold in the streets
Sing songs like tears
From the eyes of a lovely young bride
Who wrongly pays tribute to an unworthy man.

Stand on the edge between forever and now
On that vast gulf urging to suicide.
You may leap to an end in the arms of the void.
Many have.

Bitter memories will fade with the beating of your heart
As you beg your petty god to release and let fade
Your being to the comforts of oblivion.

Better still you may leap with gladness in heart,
Your voice lifted up in defiance and rhyme.
Sing songs of the lost as you fall to your death
With a smile, bringing light even there
In the nothingness.

For if leap you must, and almost all do,
Then remember your life as you fall.
In the moment before the void encompasses you
A streak of light will race into the night,
And far up above on the edge,
The ledge of hopelessness,
Someone will pause in their rush to doom,
Maybe singing, will stop in mid note
And whisper under their breath
“How beautiful, that light.”

When dogs and men no better than dogs
Have rent asunder all that was once sacred,
All your feelings, all your trappings held so boldly,
Lift up your voice in song;
Don't let them chain you
To an earthbound form.





113.
The Innocent
He was once a human
Like everyone else
Then he was a prisoner
Falsely accused.
They killed his heart
Wrapping steel cords around him
Squeezing him;
cords became a cage,
Tighter and tighter,
They fed the beast they created
And then wanted to kill.

It does not work.
It will never work.

The prisoners file past the righteous.
Except for clothes
It is difficult to tell them apart.




114.
The Long Road Home

Where rolling river meets the sea
In a palace of jade and gold
Left I coldly a young beauty
To begin my journey home.
Far away on a mountainside
By an icy bubbling brook,
Lay my home, my cherished home,
The place where my father died.
While going there I tarried
In dreams, grand thoughts
and the comfort of blissful ignorance.
I cast that all away
Sought the truth in my soul.

I set out walking again,
And I walked
On the way to my bubbling brook.
It just grew farther and farther away,
And my feet swelled and lent their pain.

I rested my weariness
In a lovely forest glen;
Soon I was spoiled by naughty nymphs,
And faeries who whispered of sin.

Before another moon had passed
My home had been nearly forgotten.
I seemed to have found my place at last
In that forest of earthly delights.

I now spend my time in the arms of the meek
And the lovely, and do you dare
Question the value of what I seek?
Don't bother.
Nobody cares.