The pain climes higher up my throat

No escape from failure

The price you pay to change your path

Seems too much

You can’t escape from your mistakes

They haunt your dreams, your every thought

Silent screams echo through heaven

How do you fight to repent

Tears burn tracks across the soul

No light sparks wisdom

There’s no escaping failure

Calling for some sort of savior

Even angels fall

Grace always one step ahead

Heart closes in agony

Soft the screamless sound

Hands shaking from the terror of the height

Failure is the end

Through crushing downpour

From mountains backing darkened skies

The eclipse that falls from ominous clouds

On landscapes moored with pain and despair

There walked a shadow

Bent and broken from shame

Wilting life and spouting poison

Hatred emanating from the shriveled form

Radiating frustrated fury

Cast into the oppressive incarceration

Created from waiting, and hoping

The backlash of dreams

The postured enmity of assuming

That love is the backdrop of strength

The motivation for life

The only sort of achievable perfection

Futile, folly

Crushed by a backdrop of pain

Fooled by love

Heart darkened by shadows

Today I wept tears of blood

Running ruse of hatred plots

They ran in torrents of a flood

Lakes forming in my heart of rot

Last morning when the sun had risen

From its bed of darkness blooming

Shining on my fouling prison

Light on steel the shadows booming

At the height of noon tomorrow

When my flesh is torn with pain

When tears fall in endless sorrow

Red and dark hot seeping rain

Call the hearken to the stars

Last thing left for me to see

Steal my carcass of its scars

So you may learn and then can flee

When hope is fled

And love is gone

The wounds are bled

No right or wrong

Running ruse of hatred plots

The rain a tormenting flood

And forming in my heart of rot

Hot tears the dark and red of blood

I am running through emptiness. Hands reach out to grab at me. Long knurled bloodless nails and twisted broken fingers attached to arms still dragging flesh from the body they were hacked from. Nothing connects to the bloody strands of skin and vein hanging from the arms. Just dead arms reaching to pinch and twist my own flesh. I feel the passage of time with my heaving lungs, burning throat, and constant fear that keeps me running. But there is no escape they keep steady pace with me floating along in a grim mockery as they clutch for my living flesh.

I feel the wind rushing through the front of my helm. Cutting along the edge of my open blade. With my wings tucked against my back gravity steals me from the air. Bringing me closer to my target. The large black mass twists below me. Fighting a legion of spinning lights. My wings spread slightly to break the impact of my feet landing on the scaled hide. The glint of my silver gauntlets flash as my blade descends. The beast screams as blood pours between flesh and bone. Rent by the sweep of my arm over and over. Its spiked neck arches as it views me with a burning malevolence. I smirk up at its heavy lidded eye and plunge my sword deep into the already open wound.

Pale sand filters between my toes. The sky dark with clouds rumbles with thunder and the wind sweeps the surf into a stinging spray. I stand still, calmly staring out into the waves. I can almost see the swell of water as the serpent rises from deep waters. It’s dark out line pulsing under the surface of the ocean. Waiting, watching, hoping for a chance to do its duty and keep me from the water. As always I have let myself believe that my approach of a different sea will not alert the snake. But it senses my longing, as a hound smells blood. I let the salty spray wet my face then turn and stride back inland. Knowing I will be forever kept from my home. The simple glimpse of the water was all I could ever hope for.

Amidst the endless search of self

I came across a foreign thing

As was the serpent to the maiden eve

Curiosity mixed with fear

This thing in me was something dark

Coiled tightly before the strike

Lilting softly was its voice

I thought in pride to know myself

Better than most people should

I poked and prodded at my boundaries

Crossed all my limits

And came closer to perfection

Than the angels in their choirs singing

But the thing that baffled me

This thing colder than the glinting blade

That struck the weak

And tore the helpless from fortunes breast

No balanced scale its midst did keep

I tried to pry it from my person

And cast it far from who I was

But when it fled from my mind

The darkness left no light behind

For the thing I had to grasp

As the serpent was to the maiden eve

Something to be left alone

Though as well a door to the unknown

The night was full with lit suspense

And gaudier was the finch who cried

Amidst the flames that fought relent

The bird singing his black goodbyes

Thus in compliment of bright yellow hues

Flames licking up the branching tree

Not of their anger did pity imbue

Nor can flame have mercy

And yet as flightless songbird perched

High in the leaves crackling with heat

All at once the fires smirched

And fell back with fast retreat

There are those who can say the sun is all they need

And yet they sleep at night and find reprieve

They preach that the glory of the light filled sky

Banishes the things that in the darkness lie

They sing about uplifting day

And of the morning shout their praise

But love, healing and dreams are found at night

When darkness falls and succeeds the light

In stark and brilliant declaration

Without the once constant covering of stress

The brilliance once encumbered shines

No longer masked by conviction of mores folly

And with my mind no more confined

I find that joy is most majestic

The dark and gleaming shade of fear

Once laminating every thought

With every moment laced with risk

The bliss unsullied by protective layers

And thus is life deemed more expensive

Myself becoming more impassioned