Apokalypsis

the incisions are old and cold to the touch
they terminated their function as an injunction
against further passions permeated the fabric,
a cold, old, red oil that once was lit for light,
now fighting even for memory. the scars are relevant.

I have sealed away my soul as a time capsule,
allowing it only brief bursts of air and light
as needed to keep a fractured ruby heart beating.
have I really become so corrupted by this graceless age
that I would turn my face from love and wage a war within myself.

wars are fought for the right to write histories,
or to validate those told in whispered ironies
to those who only dream of war, even in the sphere of Venus,
for they have been playing the cold wombs so long
that they would not know what to do with living flesh.

I have seen the dead eyes, glistening only with light
reflected from distant fires that will never touch them,
the couer rage having fled and left us for dead so much
that even now I would lay down amidst the cold limbs
and let my fires bank in the abattoir of the forgotten.

pride can only carry you so far. purpose must be divine,
at least as divine as an earnest kiss or the touch
of an ardent mistress in the chill shadows of a cold room,
drawing out heat to feed upon and chase away the mediocrity
of bartered hearts cracked open like nuts on an anvil.

I have left behind the photos and the memories curdle
like even the sweetest milk does in time and nature.
I can recall their laughs, their kisses, their eyes and lies,
and the motivations that brought them to me and I to them
like some Valkyrie, picking through the slaughtered.

is there yet time for a final run through the fields
where the sun screams above an energetic horizon, reviving
even one as far gone as I am, and have been, for some time,
except in the illusions and the vampirism of inspiration.
I draw my blood from veins, in vanity and sanity, to burn.

and not unlike an abomination of golem and phoenix, I rise,
eyes of quicksilver, tears that are monuments and memories
of an ennobling futility. faith in the wraiths that call
me to fall a little harder next time for general amusement.
a dream of redemption in the arms of an angel, descending.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.