steve1223 Poetry (718)

At my door Death stood
With scythe in his hand
“Come,” he breathed,
“the other side awaits thee.”

Terrified I arose
Though I did not want
Yet follow I must

Slowly life leaves her
Not willingly
Fighting
For every breath

As she drops to the ground
The strand breaks
And the pearls cascade
Around her dead body

Dream your dreams of yesteryear
When you were young and free
Drown your sorrows in your cup
And cry for all that’s been

Let those tears from your eyes
Trickle down your cheeks
As you wail “why, oh why,
Has age crept upon me?”

Forgotten are the things so good
As you wallow in self pity
Then you wonder why no-one cares
Or extends a hand for helping

See things you have instead
Count blessings day by day
Keep it up and what is left
Will not be here tomorrow

Yesterday, and all the yesterdays have gone, passed. The mistakes, the wrongs, all our regrets, they stretch back from this time, back to our beginning. Nothing we do, nothing we say, no amount of wishing, no amount of crying will change anything, not one iota. It is as if written in stone. Left it’s indelible mark on history.

Tomorrow and all the tomorrows have as yet not been born. They do not exist nor is there any promise that they will. They may stretch forward for many years to come, or, they might be cut short in the womb before being birthed. All the plans, dreams and hopes come to naught if there are no tomorrows.

Today is the day over which you have power. Today is the day over which you can wield your influence, where you can make a difference. Deeds of yesterday cannot be changed, but today is within your control. No wrongs, no regrets if today is lived much better.

It was there, at a time so long ago
While walking through the darkened alleys
All alone, hate emanating, proudly it stood
The Closet from the pit of Hell

I am a great believer of my rights
The right to make my own mistakes
Of letting go of my past misdeeds
But this, this came from my mortal enemy

Now I would rather waltz with the wind
And swim against the raging torrents
Than to have to deal with this again
But this was not just ‘the chance encounter’

No not at all, not everything changes
Life is much more than just skin deep
When our wills last met, our last touch
Almost I believed that there was no need to leave

But something deep within me dragged me back
Saved me from that awful abyss
And I knew that on this I had to call
As once more I prepared for the battle

What is that sound beneath my bed
Or is it something that’s in my head

The sound of claws upon the wall
Footsteps that echo down the hall

The scuttling sound upon the floor
The persistent banging on the door

A silent scream that’s barely heard
At edge of vision through tears blurred

All around there’s a slithering sound
Hard as you might, nothing to be found

The terror rises, you want to scream
You know what’s happening is not a dream

Take heed, take heed, best run so fast
To stay here, not long will you last

I believe the silence is here
All around it’s deafening
From corner of eye I see them move
Yet in full sight they vanish

In the walls they scurry round
They rule as if their kingdom
I’m sure that natives they are not
From beyond the stars they travelled

Doesn’t matter who I tell
They laugh and point their fingers
Now and then, no rhyme or reason
A mangled corpse is found

The corpse that’s left is in such a state
Surely no human could do it
The skin removed, every last inch
And all the organs missing

On the face, what’s left of it
The eyes, they stare accusing
How could this happen? Seem to say
And mouth formed in a scream

So once again I say to you
That the silence I believe is here
Believe or don’t, it matters not
For you might be the next

The pain … I think … I can no longer take it
It bores into me, through my skull, into my brain
And from there it spreads outwards, like a wave
Burning every fibre of my being, leaving desolation

I was not always like this, at some time normal
I was like you, leading a boring, mundane life
There was nothing distinctive or different about me
Once seen, easily forgotten, part of the background

This was before THEY came, blending with humanity
Unable to be distinguished, silently conquering
I don’t know from where or when they came
I don’t even know how they came, but come they did

Why am I the only one? Why can I see them?
I can see their true shape, hideous creatures
Cold cruel eyes, there is no pity or mercy in them
Those eyes, windows to the depths of hell

They’ve done something to me, attacked me somehow
Day by day I get worse, the pain increases
But no-one listens, no-one believes what I say
I fear my end is near, they will have won the world

It was the only thing left in the now empty room
A room devoid of colour, or even a window
The only source of light a single hanging globe
And that was so dim as to be almost negligible

It sat there, like a giant ogre hunkering down
Staring, glaring, menacingly silent
One could be led to believe it was foreshadowing doom
And yet … there was also something benign about it

All around there was a hum as if a million bees
And the walls and ground vibrated to an unheard beat
Orchestrated by a mad celestial being
Constantly changing in intensity and rhythm

Slowly it rose to it’s full height
And with great effort shuffled towards me
It seemed like an eternity for the realisation to sink in
I was staring at myself

Round and round they chase each other
Such a mad and crazy dance
Getting much harder to tell them apart
It would only be by chance

The years piled up, they weary me
So many things I’ve done
Regrets there are, so many now
I could list them one by one

Nothing I do changes anything
Life just carries on

“Alice,” I cried, desperation in my voice, “where are you?”
But only deafening, painfully so, silence all around me.
Could she, in the blink of an eye, have disappeared and how?
Do things like this happen in real life, I thought only in the movies.

Early evening it had been and we were sitting quietly drinking tea.
Faint glow in the sky as the sun slowly sank beyond the horizon.
Gathering storm clouds billowed like manic riders across the sky.
Hideous screams rent the night and sudden lightning flashes.

I could see nothing. I had been temporarily blinded by the brightness.
Just as I was beginning to panic my sight started to slowly return.
Knowing that there was something amiss was almost instant.
Left of me there was a tree with a red trunk and black spikes on it.

Moreover from this tree were hanging small animals with green fur.
Nothing else that I could see resembled anything that I was familiar with.
Only then I suddenly realised that nowhere could I see Alice.
Panic took hold of me , I am ashamed to say, and I called out for Alice.

Questions kept racing around in my mind but not one could I answer.
Round and round my thoughts did go but no solution’s ending.
So there forlornly I sit in a foreign land, reality has left me stranded
There’s no way, sense to make, for sanity has surely left me.

Under my feet I can feel the ground, there’s movement like a heartbeat.
Very faint and very soft there is sound, a bit like angels singing.
What does it all mean? As I pondered everything around me changed.
X-ray, that’s what it reminded me of. Shades of gray and see through.

“You will be alright. Don’t move, the ambulance is on its way.”
“Zaria is my name and I will look after you until it gets here.”

Never human eye has seen
And lived to tell the tale
Of the Gobbledoth that roams along
The Murray River trail

Many tales from years gone past
Round campfires still told
Of horrid sounds in the night
And claw prints that were found

Old Cedric from The Bridge one night
His car had broken down
In the scrub he did encamp
His hair turned white with fright

Screams in the dead of night
And claw marks on the roof
Car almost overturned
And tyres ripped to shreds

To this day old Cedric will say
That nothing does compare
To the horror that he felt that night
As on the floor of the car he lay

Mike and Joe were mustering
When night time did befall
Weirdest noises and claws on rock
Sent them packing homeward

The Bucheners one night did go
To camp along the river
Him they found stark raving mad
Her body was never recovered

Their tent was ripped in tattered shreds
The ground around all dug up
Blood had soaked the sleeping bag
A sight so terribly gruesome

Farmers round will tell you yarns
Of sheep and cattle losses
Dogs that wander into the night
To disappear forever

These tales I tell as told to me
This creature fierce and gruesome
Sharp of claw and piercing teeth
A killer by natural instinct

So be warned and be aware
Of the Gobbledoth that roams along
The Murray River trail