~ Dark Echoes ~
            (An Apocalyptic Lost Love Tale)

Never such beauty has entered my eyes
Than the black staggered dress of a seven-year widow
And the sackcloth of scorn stained by tears of a sinner
Never such beauty will ever be mine…

Raised in a rape-room creating illusions of bondage and freedom
Sustained and destroyed by the skeleton key
Chained to the ribs in the daughter of madness
Defenseless I wait for the shiver of fear
A door opens wide…
The cold hits my darkness…

Spores of the Eden snake fall where they may
All of my paintings are children of rape
I dream every night of a glorious flash
In our desolate future, to burn out my eyes
For then she will die
But the door always opens…
The door always opens…

To hold the one unchosen gift but never to remember
To know the truth of all that is and know this truth condemns her...

Billions of people will die in a day
When thresholds are crossed on perpetual clocks and disaster unfolds in celestial parallax
Warnings of doom when the moon hides Orion, a negative magnet releasing the catalyst
Sent from above…

A time bomb set in motion from that unknown day of history
The moment of initial sin!
The mystery of what has been!
The hallowed day of souls dispelled in seven-hour increments
In every haunted memory the dungeons of denial
In hollow masks of tragedy, the party of the year reborn in organized rebellion
In worship of the burning curse, denying its undying force
And so denying dark and light, and so denying this:

That there will be dark echoes when the former terrors come
When plagues of death distort the sun
When rumbles of decaying plates return us to our deadly roots
Hidden in a passing rainbow, there I hear the dreadful cries
Warning of the coming skies

Clouds of sulfur bound with water, bringing blood-red burning lava
Fountains of the deep reopened, heavy molten raindrops rise
Time grenades of ice and brimstone building steam and splitting open
Thundering from wells down under, mortars of collapsing domes
Shrapnel of divine disaster, falling fast and falling faster!
Nations lain to nightmare lands of pain the world has never known
All as one in silence dreaming
Never so alone

The storm before eternal calm
The shadow of the last eclipse
A black dress cloaking songs of sorrow, gone but never letting go
Sackcloth of an ancient widow
Millions killed without discretion
Waves of fathomless destruction, in the desert, in the snow

Never such horror a pen could describe
See through the eyes of the blind and the outcast
Fly with the worldwide dance of the whirlwinds
Fanning the ash from a scarlet-flamed candle mass
Spreading its host on the wings of the locust swarm
Spanning the skyline disguised in the setting sun
Unseen invasions by black-hearted demon hoards
Never such horror in vision has died

What is the root of this offspring of pain?
Nothing remains…
But nothing has changed…

Billions of people will die in a day
What shall remain?
Just screams in the shadows, blank screens in dank cinemas
Parables trapped in unbreakable shackles
Dead frozen actions of lost, broken actors
Killed and entombed in the lifeless projectors
Slaves of directors reflecting dark echoes
From runes in the writers' roped hands that inspired the giver of wounds
The ghost in the ruins

Genesis scribes hiding dice in the Bibles decrying the judgments of lying and sin
One ceaseless voice of excuseless denial, refuting the proof of what's coming again
Last breath of Wormwood, the terrible sacrament
Clandestine killer of mocking and merriment
Slain by the serenade brought by this renegade
Earthquakes awake with relentless intensity
Buildings will crumble and no one will cry!
Watch them collide like a domino race through the spiritless cities of sinister wickedness
Nightlights extinguished by nature’s contractions, the coiling reactions to covenant sicknesses
Cascading concrete returning to dust
Seasons of winter storms coming to stay

Corpses provide for the ravenous vultures and cannibal cultures
Fishers of men dangling meat on a hook
Heeding the book of the species they trust
Thrive to survive in this sanctioned contrivance as blood of the kill fills their open-back trucks
Celebrate life with a worshipful feast from the raw wolfen teats on which Romulus sucks...
Pray to your weapon, enjoy what’s to eat,
“Bless thou my bullets, my handsome beloved, bless now my family and clan with full stomachs!”
As power is crossed with the cowards in camouflage, damned be the Decalogue
Guillotines rise at the flick of a hand
Steel sliding down on a bloodthirsty binge

Oceans shall burn as the rainforest blackens and blades unbetrayed will replay the dark echoes
No one will learn why the wars have been fought
Vague faded echoes in fables reflected

Echoes ascending forever and ever from tombs of the past in the cities of ash
Strewn in the black twisted frames of computers
Shut down in death's shadow by self-induced shock
Books without truth, roots without water
Seven times hotter than lava, their virus left quarantined, punished, and purged from the Earth
Perish the sympathy, cherish the loss
Gone with their plans for eternity, perish the thought…

To know the key of lost Creation, never letting go
An earthly crown of fool’s gold to never have and never hold
The bittersweet mirage of freedom, always out of reach
The miracle of you and me dissolved in time's eternal sea

Billions of people will die in a day, and none shall remain
That is the day I will make my escape

Never such beauty has entered my eyes
Than the widow despised in an uncovered grave
And the child who has welcomed the sixth sense of shame
Decades of rape bears my soul on this night, how can I mourn for the end of this age?
Never such horror will ever be mine…

Bound and sentenced to life
In the center of this mountain
By an ever-flowing fountain
Where I once could see your silent face reflected with such tender trust
From the midnight sea of stars
Came the faith that moved this mountain
Made of hopes and dreams uncounted
Like the grains of sand that filled my hands
Fell crashing to this barren land
Then to rise and fly and not descend
For until a seed shall fall and die
Until its light be born again
Its life has not begun

Abides alone 'til darkness comes
Like you and I began as one
'Til suicide divided us...

I hear you sigh with no regret where all the birds have fled,
“So strong my will divine which ripped the diamond from your hand”
I fear the dying, not the death, for soon it shall be said,
“How beautiful the bleeding foot that crushed the serpent’s head”

A tortured man of sorrows yet in solace I shall breathe my last
Your memory is lost forever, melted in a moment’s flash
Diamonds remain in the darkest of echoes
Facets reflecting in every direction

Now it is time…
The time to forget…

Blessed be the dead in the womb where they rest
The deep sleep of Adam returned from the past
The safe Ocean Tomb where the first became last
Waiting for wings in the streams from the gardens of Paradise chained to his new mother’s ribs

“Wake up forever, my child of the winter
Wake from your slumber and never remember…”

Billions of sons will be born in a morning
Born to the billions of daughters before them
Such is the sign of the last fading rainbow
Tonight I will die…
If only for awhile…


            ~ Epilogue: The Black Curtain ~

Now the lights slowly dim
As the final echo ends
Of goodbye
Holding hands
As the curtain closes in

In the crowd no one stands
Where the shadowlight descends
On the silence that begins
Where it ends
Hand in hand

Countless sons face the stage
Weary heads
Bowed in death
Witnessed last their shadows cast
From a sleeping girl’s chest

From a seed
In her ribs
In my final song unfinished
On an empty page unblemished
By the eyes of greed and sin