A ghost's promise
Midnight struck three times tonight
Beneath the bellowing of the circus owls
And those lime-ridden creatures
We call conscience
A hammer that shrieked with drowns
As banshees throw aerial celebrations
At my foot I smell the putrid aroma
Of my own flesh burning
Giving peace charms to its brother
It flies to calmer ground
Trees beside untie their hands
To blink an eye farewell
Winds rise up like a hillside
Bright on the horizon
Red as blood
Like my October morning
Dim as a sheet
Spread across my wrists
Held like christ
A procession begins in your moonscapes
Like holy communion
And the veil falls
Ashes shoot from the bedrock
The misty air becomes thin
Cue music of that tender age
Filled with cherry blossoms and wreaths of gold
The palm shakes
And he releases that single rose
He’s clutched since infancy
And the decomposition commences
A sweet display
First the face, which eyes had too
Next the throat speaking of lines
That echoed his own blood
Because it was never able to sustain itself
A boy’s fallible mind
It courses on further
Down the veins to the heart
Which has been bled dry
Still thumping on
Like a tick tock
Of a rotten, blackened old clock
It escapes along the pass
To reach the lungs horrid with madness
Teeming with stories of the past
And what was said just now
It hits the stomach like a pound of bricks
Cringing and writhing in pain
Collapsing the body
Doubling over onto the cold cement
The kneecaps break
Sending a shatter through bone and ligament
A firework show in the muscle tissue
The form lays prostrate
Twitching and grasping the floor
The little demon finds his way to the toes
Gnarling them into an unattractive position
And finally crushes them
All that beauty of creation
Destroyed in mere minutes
He dropped where he loved on the cold pavement
With a single purpose
He was going to the store
A regular evening trip in this dull-drum day
But he heard the ghosts trembling behind him
Echoing words and reminders
Of what he owes them
A life for a night full of rest
They spoke "You will always have us
To coddle you to sleep.
We will hold you through the ages.
No harm will ever come to you."
