Five Shades of Autumn

I. The Untamed

An infant's cry penetrates the chilly early autumn air.
Infinite empathy gleams out of bright blue eyes
To match the cerulean sky of a perfect day.
His wails echo out into the universe
From the eternal sounding board of infancy,
Repeating and repeating this beautiful noise
Of confusion and curiosity.
Gardens grow the most delectable berries
That portend the fruits of life,
But there are the faintest hints of the derelict.
Recalcitrance and petty kleptomania
Rear their miniature heads,
Blasting out tiny flames from inchoate wicks
For there is not yet enough wax for the conflagration
That will in time erupt.

II. The Ragged

Maternal absence and Father's rex flask aside,
You spent your time in the alleyway
Smoking cigarettes with the crew.
There wasn't any time for consequences,
For those years all flew by like steamships in the sky.
Everything was all right as smoke was carried away
By the autumn winds,
Laughter over newfound ersatz adulthood
Reverberating through the concrete walls.
Each with his own name in separation from biological lineage,
You realized that there were things far more important
Than the claptrap prescribed by parents and teachers.
Where was this all leading you? perhaps you should have asked,
For like a snowball rolling down a hill and picking up momentum,
You were already halfway to doom.

III. The Delinquent

This filthy room contains me,
Exactly what I deserve for the infraction of misaligned life.
Bread and water and dust consume my being.
Incarceration is the natural consequence
Of being a tad off in the head,
Chemicals riding neurons to their inglorious ends.
Venal puncture or alveolar singe,
It's all the same,
Comets flying through the galaxy
Burning out in autumnal infinity.
The population of the globe lives in little dollhouses
Illuminated through paper filters,
Light refracted within crystal prisms.
Here I rot with the rats and voles,
Vermin that feast upon the spoils of humanity's disregard.

IV. The Weary

The universe never equipped us with the machinery
To process the stars that glide by on the conveyor belt
In this factory that rises up with black-and-white smokestacks
Between the skyscrapers where all the world's business is conducted,
Never provided us with the mill to grind the grain that grows diseased
And comprises the emaciated harvest
Which is all that the autumn has been wiling to offer us.
We have received a horrible illness with open arms,
Content to slip away in impeccable peace.
At least we have time to contemplate the vast nothingness
That will soon embrace us
Like the arms of an ancient goddess.
Here it comes, a monstrous hurricane
To wash away the cities and turn them to shore,
And we shall become the sand.

V. The Buried

God damn the sun!
Ossuaries deserve darkness to keep them in shadow,
Beneath the realm of the living who stroll down the sunny streets
Blissfully unaware of the void that consumes every man's bones.
The common folk are terrified of body's end,
But once you've been to hell and back countless times,
Death becomes the most comfortable pillow
On which to lay down one's exhausted head.
The world gets ready to die as autumn comes on
But it will one day be resurrected,
While corpses sigh out a happy final breath
In ultimate recognition that they have escaped from this endless cycle,
A prestidigitation to trump Houdini.
It started out in pure nude innocence for our poor subject,
But all these terrible transgressions have now put him to sleep forever.