I've been staring at her lying still for so long (she's so still)

Waiting for this endless night to color into dawn (it's never ending)

But it's never lifting, always shifting, no one can breathe

It holds me under, and this drags down you (it drags you down)

This breaks what was made one into two

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below; Beat with my heart more blessed than heart can tell; Blessed, but for some dark undercurrent of woe; That seems to draw, but it shall not be so: Let all be well, be well.

Only embers remain, refusing to fade

There's still light to find our way

Only embers remain, black turning to gray

There's still light to find our way

Only embers remain

The Night's a city of ashes and ghostly fears;

Waiting for this desert to be rid of dust and tears.

I go back to an empty room,

where each ray of light is a black wound. 

I go back to an empty room,

where comfort lies bleeding. 

I go back to an empty room,

where only the walls are home.

I go back to an empty room,

where smiles get bent out of shape. 

I go back to an empty room,

where thoughts are twisted into knots. 

I go back to an empty room,

where stale traces blossom. 

I go back to an empty room,

where dead silence grows. 

I go back to an empty room,

and sit with the ghosts of sleep. 

I go back to an empty room,

where dead fears dwell. 

I go back to an empty room,

where phantoms find form. 

I go back to an empty room,

Stuffed, cramped and seething with my mistakes. 

I go back to a daily tomb

As the days turn to memories. 

By A. Guy

Constant Change

'It's terrible beauty,' muttered a sage,

'It is a terrible beauty, this old age.'

His breath stank of metallic must. 

His coat was dressed in a coat of dust. 

'Alley cats fight over a dying world. It's just..

Uhuh,' stormed a loaded cough, 'it's just!'

Cold spoke through the holes of his fingerless gloves. 

His shoulders shook and shuddered like shivering doves. 

His brownish white hair on edge stood,

like snakes scavenging for unsoiled food. 

'Beauty sleeps in strange places.

Beauty is a ship lost at sea; sinking; hiding; hoping.'

Pupils kept bouncing between the walls of his blood-crawled eyes;

chasing a ghostly bottle and two glasses, meagre in size. 

'I have measured time with lost sleeps.  

I have measured distance with trails of tears'.

His broom-like arms were stuck to a table of awful pine. 

He poured his sorrows into a glass; in the other, mine. 

A pauper's beard choked the outline of his face;

Covering what was left of a sad smile: a thin trace. 

He raised two fingers to his forehead and started laughing;

a forehead that was dismally pink with the pain of coughing. 

'Don't expect change from a whore,

and don't expect life to be fair. 

Not everything happens for a reason,

and life happens only for a season.' 

His eyes coiled like empty rings shimmering in sheer darkness. 

The bottom of his glass spanked the pine in a heartless caress. 

'You can't make history without making mistakes.'

A tremor snuck to the edges of his lips,

and curved slowly them into a bow's tips. 

His voice broke. 

His cheeks began to soak. 

'I had expectations, you see. 

Things are not always as they appear to be.

I caught a glimpse of her once on a train. 

Thought I went mad! Thought I was insane. 

She wore dark boots and a darker scowl. 

I stopped and waved and smiled. 

I waved to the back of her coat. 

(Mon amie) I said (do you remember me?)

She turned her neck and hurled a look -

the kind you'd find in a tattered book -

that shot straight through me like an arrow. 

It was a speeding bullet from a range close and narrow. 

Her shoulders shrugged as her neck was turning back. 

Back - Back - Back - Back!

Funny how that word sounds, like a dime-filled sack. 

It was as if her careless glance carved

gaping worlds and worlds between us. 

I stared at the back of her coat as it bobbled away. 

I shouted like a raven into barren night. 

(Mon amie, don't you recognise me?

I walked by you when no one else dared to stand. 

I who waded through thousands of your red living hells,

have barely caught a broken, blurred glance of your gloomy paradise. 

I was your shadow when everything else was afraid of the sun. 

I who stared and glared at the watery mirror of your soul,

for years and years on end,

Could barely recognise my faded reflection).

She was gone.'

One end of a pathetic fishing tether was wrapped around his leg;

the other, around the neck of a whimpering bitch he called Meg. 

She had eyebrows longer than her tail. 

Her muzzle was more acute than a boat's sail. 

She buried her muzzle into a pigsty of a floor,

Closely heeding the ticks and clicks above the door.

'Dreams cost money,

Hell! They cost a damn fortune,

but they make us a little less broken. 

They bleed us dry,

but Dreams are what make us whole.'

A rumble bellowed from his hunger-stricken gut. 

He wired his swollen jaw tightly shut. 

An alien voice swam across the stark darkness of the bar,

like the great sparkle that breaks from a raging, shooting star:

'Bottom's up! Life's too short.'

A glimmer flickered through the old man's eye,

like fire that was born yet soon about to die. 

'No!' He shrieked while shooting his finger to the ceiling,

Standing and wringing the dog's neck in agonised feeling. 

'Life is very long. 

It's living that's short. 

Yes!

Living is short. 

Living is short, and then we die.

You can't defeat the quicksands of age. 

You can't resist them. 

You can't fight the winds of change. 

Don't give up. Just lose like a winner. 

End the race with the breath of a fresh beginner. 

Everything changes. Everything's changing. 

The world runs forward like a river in constant change. 

You can't scroll up the same Twitter Feed twice,

any more than you can step in the same river twice. 

Change is old: Old as time and old as sin,

and bids new lives in old forms to begin.'

He then looked entreatingly down. 

His dog still wore a long frown. 

He grabbed the chair's belly, dragging it to his knees. 

The chair howled like a she-wolf at unease. 

He carried the dog on his lap. 

He pat her back. Tap! Tap! Tap!

The dog lifted her downcast head,

like one who was risen form the dead. 

'Each paints a different picture of truth. 

Each imagines a unique drawing of reality. 

Yes! Reality is the work of imagination. 

It's a devil that creeps without invitation.'

He clapped his eyes shut like one who was blind,

and in darkness saw light second to none of its kind. 

'To the sand-stormed deserts of troubled minds,

Peace is calming rain. 

Peace is a castaway heaven that gets further time and again.'

Barely able to stifle a murky fog of sighs,

rapid fists drummed his chest, wishing he dies. 

'It's marvellous!' he sobbed, like a prisoner in a cage.

'It is a marvellous waste, this dying wreck of an age.'

Loneliness, indeed, is a dangerous thing;

TV voices that keep you company and sing,

Unless door bells go crazy and start to ring. 

By A. Guy

It's not me thinking this. 

It's not me writing this. 

The words are just pouring into my thoughts,

like a Nile that pours into a sea that knows no bounds. 

Am I possessed by some lovely demon?

Am I haunted by a ruthless, relentless ghost?

To this monstrous beauty, my arm raises a toast. 

I smile when I think of her. 

Her voice throws me into worlds of wonder. 

The twinkle in her eyes; the sparkle between her lips

are dizzying sirens to a heart that leaps and skips. 

Her touch is the hush of warm winds

Bringing secrets to ears and calms to their ends. 

She has a graceful neck, and legs that reach eternity,

and a mind that meets paradise. 

I get lost in the maze of her mind,

but I don't want to find my way back. 

I don't want to go back. 

Against the storms of time, her smile sails through seas of memory. 

(Feelings blossom when memory begins to sprout).

The world seemed to go on forever before her;

now it's just too small,

like a room that smells of Woman,

and stretches its walls when she sinks her toes in. 

(One could size up the world between her fingers - in her palm,

and measure space, stars and the universe in her calm. 

One could fit black holes and galaxies in between her thoughts;

Without stirring a ripple; without raising alarm;

Without tossing a brow; without havoc or harm. 

I have sized up the world:

I love life, but the world is bullshit). 

Music stops when her ankles are far. 

Once I saw her dancing,

and felt the earth spinning under my feet. 

Then I saw her laughing,

Suddenly planets were shaken,

and from their orbits were taken. 

Her eyes were criminals - stealing the room. 

Make-up would ruin her soul. 

She and unearthly beauty go together

Like coffee and cream or man and coffee;

or dog and boy or catch and dog. 

She is a beautiful star on a wistful night;

a beautiful scar covered out of wasteful sight. 

Her charm is the colours of the sun descending from above,

and like a rainbow that is soaked in the light of the sun,

I am intoxicated. 

Here's the sin of my age:

Up against her, I have lost my rage,

then sat by a gloomy window counting the tiny dots

on a battered old clock until it comes back - 

Like an insidious attack -

but it never came back. 

It's never coming back. 

The clock never lied. 

The clock never had anything to hide. 

Time erases what life has written. 

Time robs what fate has given. 

Mountains crumble. Seasons fade. 

Black turns into grey; light into dark.

Flesh becomes bone. 

Bones turn to ashes. 

Beauty cracks like the walls of Troy. 

Beauty, like centuries, passes. 

In a glimmer of lightning; in a swing of a sword;

In a bat of an eye; in a drum of a heart,

Beauty, like a ghost, vanishes. 

Hers, though, is eternally sealed and seared in lingering memory. 

Her image forever dawns in the troubled skies of my mind,

sometimes brilliantly like a sun above thick clouds,

Other times quietly like a shimmering morning star shrouded in blankets of fog;

but always standing tall like an ageless Helen against the waste and wreckage of History:

Indelible for all eternity - a permanent tattoo on the skin of existence.    

I've known only sleepless nights

that have lost their way to city lights. 

I've been blind since the get go;

'Been groping in sorry darkness;

'Been a lonely Sphinx amid dust and ruins;

Been a prisoner; 'Been dead -

Dead!

I've been buried, and dirt settled

Over my chest, shoulders and neck,

but now it's like I'm seeing stars

move for the first time. 

Since the first flash; the first flicker,

Her eyes have been fickle moons mounting mountains;

Peering over star-freckled horizons of murderous anticipation.   

Her stare have been the very glare of resurrection -

The burning breath of life -

Shaping life in lively form. 

I was dead before our eyes met. 

Life is being between her eyes;

the rest is merely duty...and decay.  

By A. Guy

A man sits on the floor, cross-legged and with eyes wound tightly shut, inside a steel cage with rusty metal bars, all black and brown. Weak and wane wrinkles first bend the skin on his forehead into easy crumples; into soft creases. Then they slowly and thinly unwind and dwindle into smooth nothingness; as if they were melting and becoming one with the air. It's like these wrinkles were ghosts haunting the dome of his head until all his thoughts were dead...until all was still, calm and quiet...until nothing was left stirring; not even the lingering shadows. Then they simply turned around without a sound and floated away with saggy heads and downcast eyes. A thick odour, of bleached blood and rotten garlic, envenoms and envelops the horizon, like a fog that proudly rides the saddles of clouds in a moody December. Absolute darkness heavily hovers. The wheezing sound of a creaking door being slowly opened cuts the awful silence like a hacksaw cutting through bone. A few weak bulbs faintly flicker a sickly yellow. A moment staggers like a minute, and a minute crawls like a year. Heels are heard ringing between the walls, softly clicking and clacking on a cold floor. A volcano of gleaming madness violently erupts from under the flat and fat nose of the floor-bound man. "Kill me! Kill me!" The words had been gurgling and seething inside his mouth like wretched vomit. Silence is flooded. Silence drowned. "Me..." the echo deafens the thunderous lack of reply.

By A. Guy

We have lingered in the oases of the deep

By angels winged with light, bright and white

Till darkness reclaims us, and we lose sight.

O, for the silence that hides

Behind and between words,

and for life that beneath silence hides.

Ah, for the strained, lingering undying cords.

For the promised death of a life unlived,

and other ties that should not be saved.

Like lights behind us,

Coming to blind us;

People come and people go,

People dance and rave without a show;

Like soft and silent winds slipping with ease,

Like a smooth, playful and flying breeze

While the world sleeps quietly around,

like a corpse, scratching and coughing with no sound.

With fluttering arms, people fall and people fumble,

While their weekends before them heavily tumble;

As the years, slowly dragging their glimmering feet behind, stumble

as the years stutter; as the years mumble,

and minutes expand into centuries;

While stretching their arms, bowed and humble.

We are the sleepers who do not dream.

We are the keepers of a silent scream,

of a world that swims round and round,

and has rich nightmares in nights with no sound.

Fluttering - fumbling,

Stuttering and stumbling.

We have lingered in the dungeons of sleep

By devils clad with coats red and black

Till flickers and flashes save us, and we're back.

By A. Guy

I learned, I learned

If you can't eat the wolves

Don't run with the heard

If you can't feast with crows

Don't fly with the flock

If you can't swim with the sharks

And if you can't charm the sirens

Ditch the islands

And sink your ships

And if you can't wear a crown

Surrender your throne

The wolves are at my door

The end begins

Surrender the throne

My head is a home in flames

Drag me out from the dying wreck

Drag me out and let'em sing

Let the burning voices sing

The wolves, the crows

Let them sing

The sharks, the sirens

The owls, the dogs in a ring

Let them all sing

Let them fucking sing

And if you can't be a devil

Then leave this hell

By A. Guy

Let them run

Don't wipe them eyes

Don't dry those tears

No

Not yet

Let the rivers run

Let sadness wash over us

And let us drown

Today is down in flames

Tomorrow is up in smoke

And the ashes are again,

Fallen black like acid rain

Let the rivers of sadness drown the flames

Let them run

Let them swallow the smoke

Let the rivers run

Let them wash the ashes away

And let the scars be eaten alive

It's like the same thing

I'm just a little late

I'm always hoping to maybe change

It's like the same thing

You're just a little late

I am away.

It's like the same thing

We're just a little late

I'm always hoping to maybe stay

From the flames to stay away.

By A. Guy

Don’t become

Don’t know

Don’t grow

Don’t learn

Be like the rest of us

Don’t live

Just wait here to die

Existence,

Your war;

Not mine

I thought I was ready to write

I thought I was ready to paint reality

With even a more beautiful reality

I thought I was ready to dance

And spread over the ground

My wings and loud sound

I thought I was ready to dream

I thought I was going to quietly scream

I thought I was ready to sing

But you had me centuries ago

Our love, a proud monument to show

That history’s only reaping what you sow

Our love, a war I cannot win;

An epic battle of despair and sweet sin

Even if I cannot begin

Even if it means nothing now

Fog enfolds my memory

Images get lost amid the mist

Life tremors with shuffling light

I remember when you told me:

“I just love my demons but they have to go.”

To the bright stars you showed your scars

They glistened with a more terrible glow

You held my smile in your hands

And a dream twinkled on your face

And I’m missing those days again

The days of memory and innocent pain

Yeah, I’m missing those days again.

Now it takes a daily miracle instead

To drag me out of my bed

Like I’ve been sleeping with the dead.

And now you ask of me:

Don’t live

Don’t die

Don’t even try

Don’t be

Just exist like me

Long ago,

Before I could know

I thought I was ready to write

But you had me in just one night

Even if it means nothing now

You had me for just one night

The echo crawls and resounds

Over the skulls of all other sounds

Of my memory and its infertile grounds:

“I just love my demons but they have to go.”

The voice is, with fear, whiter than snow.

Is there nothing left?

Is there anything left to say?

Are there any more words to sing?

By A. Guy

Hell is other people

Said a sage without a steeple

Hell is oneself,

No. No.

Hell is myself.

Hell is the stars sown

Over the face of the sky

Hell is the stars shone

In the desolate despair of night

Unobtainable, unattainable;

Desire uncontainable

Lord, reap all of my stars

And keep them locked in a box

With all of my scars

Hell is the bawling balls

Rolling not with a meager speed

Each, pocket-bound, falls

From a green plain, soft as mead

Alone in its leather-barred cell

Pushed by a stick into a still hell

A community in lonely fractions

Scattered, aimless unto demise

By the grace of outer actions

And the motivation of unnatural device

Each popping in its own pocket

Like pilgrim drops in an eye socket

Travelling as fast as a rocket

They used to use the name billiards

Now we say pool

This hell's wilier than a deck of cards

And has not one fool

The demon,

The enemy inside,

The skeletons in my closet

Are my only friends

You must think I'm insane

I must be what you disdain

No, wait!

Don't hate.

I suffocate.

Sufferings resuscitate

But I am much too late

The actions I can't condone

The words I can't control

Are my true biography

The shepherd falls

And the sheep strays

Sleep betrays

When darkness gets thicker

It strikes me as odd

That it strikes me,

You, us.

And everytime the clock strikes

Worlds whirl.

That clock ticks death in

Creeping, caving.

This moment is never coming coming back,

Yeah, it tastes bitter!

That moment is never coming back,

And it tastes better.

One gone,

Two gone

It's like when a nuclear blast

Silently meets a desert storm

Devastation in beautiful form!

Each tick is a maelstrom

That quakes the earth

And shuffles it into a new birth

Have you heard about this?

Life above

Had no love

For the silly clown

Who left the town

And into the tunnel he went down

He was blinded

By the brilliant stench of the tunnel

It's like living in and at the cemetery

Corpses all spangled and merry

"A child's play,"

They all will say,

Be that as it may

But a cemetery is no place to live

Dawn broke

Stars faded

Darkness that once shone

From places unknown

Fainted

Light glimmered,

Swinging between clouds

Rain came scampering

Against sills and windowpanes

It was all gloss and glitter

And the clown remained down under

Where there was no rain or thunder

A prisoner of all that he owns

Merely his flesh and his bones

His body a noose,

Knotted, gnarled,

Ravelled and wound tight

Its ropes, his soul.

A hell unending, binding, awaits

Each time he awakes.

For the vain,

For the inane,

Today, hell is mundane;

And it's running like a vein.

By A. Guy