Poetry by Simon J. Charlton

UNSUNG

– A World of Ghosts and Silent Song –

***

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

– Pablo Neruda –

***

We listen to the old songs

Lose ourselves to their sad refrain

The poet’s voice is cracked and raw

It is the mirror to our dream’s demise

The echo of our sordid pain

The ballads are soaked in whisky

And our tears are of London Gin

I never thought that to fall in love

Could be such a wretched sin

We drink to bury our sorrows

And watch the hours slip away

They become all our lost tomorrows

But we drink, it’s our only way

The only way to contend with the sadness

That seems to drip from the very walls

The only way to deal with the madness

That consumes us, one and all

We drink to still the wretched heart

Where the dark breath of the furies holds sway

Pounding their fists in their senseless art

But we drink, it’s our only way

The only way to contend with the melancholy rage

When thought’s dark legions descend

The only way to contend with this dying age

Until we reach oblivion’s end

So, we listen to the old songs

Lose ourselves to their sad refrain

The poet’s voice is cracked and raw

It is the mirror to our dream’s demise

The echo of our sordid pain

***

Simon J. Charlton is a past contributor to Synchronized Chaos magazine. He may be reached for questions or comments at simonjohncharlton@gmail.com.

***

PROMISED LAND

She said:

So yes,

I kind of thought that’s how you felt,

And I was wondering…

This world is but a bead of shadowed glass

Is a single unfallen tear

Is a bloody horror of constant regret

Is the grind of uncertain years

Is the serpent’s promise of fatal deception

Is the wound wherein are cultivated all our fears

Is the terminal moment, is desire stillborn

Is the wilderness where all hopes disappear

Such horrors hatched from the breeding pool

They cackle obscenely of heartwretched pain

Celebrant’s of despair’s vile degradation

Birthed of blind fury’s poisonous rain

These carcass visions rise unbidden

Through the lonesome bruised hours of night

Where hope is the dream extinguished

The triumph of darkness over light

So let us spread our tarnished wings

And into that Promised Land take flight

O come to me my sweetest love

And take my unworthy hand

O come to me my sweetest love

And I shall lead you into the Promised Land

We fade into the grey undone

Where the silver brows of the angels tremble as they sleep

We shall drift into the grace of unbecoming

Dreaming soft green fathoms oceans deep

To sow the seeds of our immortality

A shining harvest of rapture to reap

We shall taste the fruit of glory’s kingdom

And ecstatic illumination shall be the tears that we weep

Lost to the delicate embrace of sweetest smothering

We shall sing songs of silence to banish all pain

Folded within the arms of tender forgiveness

Our arid souls shall be reborn in the crystal rain

Such dreaming shall find realization

Midst the swirling shades of deepest night

As we are welcomed into sublimity

As we are swallowed by oblivion’s majestic light

So let us spread our tarnished wings

And into that Promised Land take flight

O come to me my sweetest love

And take my unworthy hand

O come to me my sweetest love

We shall take flight together through the Promised Land

We shall trace a path through the incredible infinite

To discover the truth of the rainbow’s end, where love it never dies

Our reward shall be silence eternal

Where all of history no longer applies

Where the future is a startling emptiness

That mirrors the limitless vista of the skies

And no more shall our senses be assaulted

By this life’s treason of unending lies

They are a scaffold of hopeless self-deception

That in truth only deepens our pain

The broken mind’s illusion of numberless mirrors

Reflecting a constant sorrow of bitter rain

For we shall know the moment unending

The dark orchid beauty of truest night

As our bodies surrender to the tenderness of grace

And we are at one with the merciful light

So let us spread our tarnished wings

And into that Promised Land take flight

O come to me my sweetest love

And take my unworthy hand

O come to me my sweetest love

We shall vanish together in the Promised Land

No more shall we have to endure

The shadowplay memories of ancient tears

The soul-withering corruption of our true reflections

Through the long-drawn out agonies of the years

No more the cowering moments of submission

To the depthless well of our bleak and bloody fears

But as our flesh is washed from our weary time-scarred bones

We shall not die my sweetest love but gladly disappear

No sadness shall accompany our leaving

No melodrama of regret and pain

Instead we shall simply have never existed

Our shadows no more than a desert’s memory of rain

No more to mark the sorrowful progression

Of hateful day into hurtful night

Instead to glory in the essence of our secret selves

Pure in the communion of the heart’s holy light

So let us spread our tarnished wings

And into that Promised Land take flight

O come to me my sweetest love

And take my unworthy hand

O come to me my sweetest love

We shall disappear as one into that Promised Land

***

When my eyes are stripped naked in startling revelation

And the sun’s a festering wound above a dying lung-scorched plain

When the raw bleeding horror of the world is revealed

And the masks of delusion can no longer be sustained

She comes to me in my hour of weakness

When my strength it fails, when resistance is vain

She comes to me and is a world of silence

She comes to me and is a world of rain

To my shallow cupped hands by grace she is delivered

She is a moment’s redemption midst this world of pain

When we conjure the poisons of our own destruction

And the spells we cast are born of alchemies profane

When the vision of beauty is lost to curdling tides of corruption

And the promise of hope gibbers only in the minds of the insane

She comes to me in my hour of weakness

When my strength it fails, when resistance is vain

She comes to me and is a world of silence

She comes to me and is a world of rain

To my shallow cupped hands by grace she is delivered

She is a moment’s redemption midst this world of pain

When the veils of the dreaming are plundered and torn

And the memory of love is all that remains

When the poet’s moon is a blood-streaked tear

And the stars in their paling are the ghosts of exhausted flames

She comes to me in my hour of weakness

When my strength it fails, when resistance is vain

She comes to me and is a world of silence

She comes to me and is a world of rain

To my shallow cupped hands by grace she is delivered

She is a moment’s redemption midst this world of pain

When desire is known only by its absence

And the mirror turns away in quiet disdain

When the heart is sorrow, an ashen wilderness

And the soul is crippled and broken and maimed

She comes to me in my hour of weakness

When my strength it fails, when resistance is vain

She comes to me and is a world of silence

She comes to me and is a world of rain

To my shallow cupped hands by grace she is delivered

She is a moment’s redemption midst this world of pain

***

I will love you for a long time because you’re holy

And I will be there through your nights when you dream

And I will be your shelter when the storms rage

And I will gather your sorrow when the stars shatter in a frozen scream

Yes, I will gather your blue aching sadness like diamonds from a sunwashed stream

I will love you for a long time because you’re holy

And I will know your sacred ocean, the depthless sleep you dream

And I will know the mystery of your breathing

And I will gather your sorrow when the stars shatter in a frozen scream

Yes, I will gather your blue aching sadness like diamonds from a sunwashed stream

I will love you for a long time because you’re holy

And I will banish the ghosts from the world where you dream

And I will wrestle your demons on a timeless shore

And I will gather your sorrow when the stars shatter in a frozen scream

Yes, I will gather your blue aching sadness like diamonds from a sunwashed stream

I will love you for a long time because you’re holy

And I will pray in the shadows you cast when you dream

And I will anoint your sacred flesh with my tears

And I will gather your sorrow when the stars shatter in a frozen scream

Yes, I will gather your blue aching sadness like diamonds from a sunwashed stream

I will love you for a long time because you’re holy

And I will be the colours in the magical weave that you dream

And I will be the trembling witness washed in your eyes

And I will gather your sorrow when the stars shatter in a frozen scream

Yes, I will gather your blue aching sadness like diamonds from a sunwashed stream

***

THE DREAM THAT FADES TO NOTHING

She said:

I can’t say that I didn’t want you to kiss me.

But I have to be honest with you,

That I probably didn’t want it for the right reasons…

The shimmering gleam of your eyes was everspring in my heart

I recall my hours of willing surrender to your subtle sensual art

Explicit moments forged in the sanctuary of your arms

Knowing only the limitless wonder of your sunbright infinite charms

When we were consumed in the flame of a glorious sin

And timeless I lapped the sweat of death from your salt-burning skin

With the moon a stunned witness of pale yellow silence

As we excavated pleasure in a storm of glorious violence

And ghosts still haunt these endless roads

Where lightning shivers for memory

Yes, ghosts still haunt these useless roads

Timelost fragments of you and me

Your nails mapped ecstasy the blood-shining length of my spine

My tongue at your cunt drank deep of sacred crimson wine

By starlight’s swoon and the Song of Songs in tender union

We realized our dream of fiercely brilliant communion

Your flesh was the axis on which my world turned

Its interior mystery the altar to which I craved constant return

With the moon a stunned witness of pale yellow silence

As we excavated pleasure in a storm of glorious violence

And ghosts still haunt these endless roads

Where lightning shivers for memory

Yes, ghosts still haunt these useless roads

Timelost fragments of you and me

Now the lost gleam of your eyes is everwinter in my heart

Empty were my hours of surrender to your poison bloody art

Those moments lost in the chill barren clutch of your arms

Starkly brutal my realization of your bleakly finite charms

The flames now extinguished a weary mockery of sin

When the sweat of death beaded marble cold upon your skin

With the moon retreated into absence for jaundiced sorrow

As I excavate the futility of countless lost tomorrows

And ghosts still haunt these endless roads

Where lightning shivers for memory

Yes, ghosts still haunt these useless roads

Timelost fragments of you and me.

The map of ecstasy is now a wound that weeps the knotted length of my spine

My tongue at your cunt shovels ashes where once it tasted sacred crimson wine

Starlight and song lay severed, relics of a once tender union

The dream that fades to nothing, is the truth of our false communion

When the axis of your flesh tilted my world no longer turned

Your interior mystery a shattered altar to which I could never return

With the moon retreated into absence for jaundiced sorrow

As I excavate the futility of countless lost tomorrows

And ghosts still haunt these endless roads

Where lightning shivers for memory

Yes, ghosts still haunt these useless roads

Timelost fragments of you and me

***

The shattered heart I know is cliché

A mirror to dull spirits and eternal winter skies

The passage of time that is a stranger to mercy

Of sleepless nights tasting only the memory of her lies

But the heart remains true no matter its lesions

No matter its purity, muddied and torn

For she was the day of terrible beauty

She the day a terrible beauty was born

The starlight in her eyes I know is cliché

The trembling weave of silver-threaded skies

And the purple cloak of her midnight tender mercies

A construct of illusion to shelter her lies

But the starlight still glows, no matter how empty

Its fluttering pulse faded sad and forlorn

For she was the day of terrible beauty

She the day a terrible beauty was born

The stolen moment I know is cliché

In shadows deep beneath blue sheltering skies

Outside of time her ocean deep mercy

Rises eventual a tempest of deception and lies

But the stolen moment only shivers to tremble

No matter the bitterness, the cynicism and scorn

For she was the day of terrible beauty

She the day a terrible beauty was born

The fallen temple I know is cliché

Of deserted chapels under blood-streaked skies

When strained metaphor echoes empty allegory

The vision when stripped naked remains death-scented lies

But the kingdom’s foundations are solid, deep rooted

And in dreams eternal she will be reborn

For she was the day of terrible beauty

She the day a terrible beauty was born

***

I haven’t felt so lonesome, babe

Since last you held me in your arms

The moon shone cold and sinister

And the stars were bitter charms

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

Through drifting smoke I first saw you, babe

And time froze like the blood in my veins

Heaven was revealed in the gleam of your eyes

To my desert heart you brought life with your gentle rain

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

Our days and nights were a carnival, babe

The air burned with limitless pleasure

My world was contained in the world of your smile

And each bead of your sweat I claimed as priceless treasure

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

What caused you to turn your back, babe?

What caused the world of your smile to fade?

My heart knew its truth before you said a word

I knew that all our promises were unmade

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

I saw my death framed in your eyes, babe

And time froze like the blood in my veins

Heaven lay abandoned in the frost of your eyes

My heart returned to desert without the touch of your gentle rain

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

My world became a wilderness, babe

As I sifted the sands of my brutal despair

I wondered at the depths my sorrow could plunge

Holding the mirror’s gaze with a vacant stare

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

The years that we had shared between us, babe

Were fading memories, sterile and cold

All the secrets that were left to tell

Remain promises untold

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell

That night when we fell away

That night when we fell…

***

How long must I wait until the ocean?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait upon the silence?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the passing of sorrow?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to trace the curve of your smile?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the shadows lift?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to swim your sacred depths?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the healing hour?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to drink your secret tears?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the risen moon?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to kiss your dreaming eyes?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the falling star?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to know your intimate deaths?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the vision forms?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to hear your song of songs?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the world is reborn?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait to enter the realm of your senses?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

How long must I wait until the ocean?

How long must I wait until the rain?

How long must I wait upon your silence?

To sanctify my heart once again

To sanctify my heart once again

***

I wrote a song of sorrow

Of smokestack tears to banish the sun

I wrote a song for the one I loved

She the world, my dream entire

She now faded, she now gone

She my vision of the kingdom to come

She my vision of the kingdom to come

When this heart’s wreckage is laid to rest

And the cold earth closes on these brittle bones

I will enter her pearlbright kingdom

And she my vision will again be known

I wrote a song of sorrow

Of a darkness cold beyond the sun

I wrote a song to cloak her absence

She the world, my dream entire

She now faded, she now gone

She my vision of the kingdom to come

She my vision of the kingdom to come

When this heart’s wreckage is laid to rest

And the cold earth closes on these brittle bones

I will enter her pearlbright kingdom

And she my vision will again be known

I wrote a song of sorrow

Of memories born beneath a dying sun

I wrote a song for one now lost

She the world, my dream entire

She now faded, she now gone

She my vision of the kingdom to come

She my vision of the kingdom to come

When this heart’s wreckage is laid to rest

And the cold earth closes on these brittle bones

I will enter her pearlbright kingdom

And she my vision will again be known

Yes, I will enter her pearlbright kingdom

And she my vision will again be known

***

I will love you until the end of days

Until this world trembles upon the brink of extinction

Until all shadows quiver, eventually to fade

Cast by the dying sun’s exhausted rays

For you are the rose and you are the fire

The dream of all wonder, my eternal desire

For you are the vision and you are the light

The mystery of all beauty, my darkest velvet night

And now I conjure you on a bonewhite shore

I have given you my everything but long to give you more

But as the ghost of you shimmers into final absence

I am left to commune with heartstorms and violence

For you are the grief and you are the sadness

The well of all suffering, my unutterable madness

For you are the sterile wasteland and you are the desolation

The heart’s truth of all sorrow, my tears of resignation

I will love you until the end of days

Until this world trembles upon the brink of extinction

Until all stars quiver, eventually to fade

And the universe exhausted collapses into decay

***

IT IS A WORLD OF RAIN AND SECRET TEARS

She said:

But I really do think that aside from all reality issues,

This is all just too complicated for me.

I don’t want to lose your friendship,

But I also don’t want you to ask me for anything else…

It is a world of rain and secret tears

It is a world of guilty silence and never wished for deception

It is a world of weary regret, cold hours and constant fears

It is a world that seeks only to deny love’s perfection

It is a world where we cast the seeds of our precious dream

Across the stonescarrred ruin of this earth’s desolation

To wonder at the sorrow we cannot help but reap

A sorrow that tells of our decline into heartbitter isolation

It is a world where in vain we attempt to hold each other

Against the inevitable tide of oncoming sadder days

The desperate struggle to claim love’s grace and salvation

As the awful truth parts us to sadder ways

It is a world where even the limitless wonder of tender observance

Cannot contend with this life’s obdurate and brutal insistence

We are left to explore our singular wound’s hateful depths

Shaped to corruption by the conditions of our existence

It is a world that seeks only to deny love’s perfection

It is a world of weary regret, cold hours and constant fears

It is a world of guilty silence and never wished for deception

It is a world of rain and secret tears

***

I still conjure you in sweetest dreams

You are shaped through my desire in burning air

But I awake to know again that terrible beauty

Heart-drowning sorrow, the grace of despair

Sleep-smeared and dream-dishevelled

With crinkle smile and tumbledown hair

I still crave the depths of your heart-secret being

But this darkest dreaming promises only the grace of despair

This moment a kingdom, this kingdom the world

Conjured so precious, soft murmurings of prayer

Bur fear shadows always such moments so fragile

A façade that crumbles to reveal only but the grace of despair

Despite our intimacies desperate fury

Those sweat-frenzied hours beyond compare

Our destinies shape us to separate shores

The hungering darkness and the grace of despair

In your eyes remain timeworn shadows

Such memories so bitter leaving only sorrow to declare

You remain a world beyond my tender touch

The distance between us shaped to the grace of despair

Here where all roads end, where the mirror

Is revelation, a frozen unforgiving stare

I shadow-walk the ceaseless hours’ terrible beauty

Seduced by this horror, the grace of despair

***

I would drown to be born again

In the soft green depths of your ocean

And I would happily surrender

To your deathworld mystery

And I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

The ghost of you is the heart of me

Yes, I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

You’re the ghost in my world all-consuming

Where mirrors hold memories in petrified silence

Where the trees scratch sinister through winter darkness

Etching my dreams with bloodstorms and violence

Where time is the fragile witness

To the death of hours, the falling of the days

Where you drift at the untouchable limits of vision

A terrible beauty held within a moonwashed haze

Where the stars burn cold their judgement

In my scarred yet lucid imagination

Where the moon crumbles to jaundiced dust

In my fists of darkness and degradation

Where your voice is tidal memory

Swelling shimmering bittersweet blue

Drowning my heart-dictated senses

With soul-burning visions of you

I would drown to be born again

In the soft green depths of your ocean

And I would happily surrender

To your deathworld mystery

And I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

The ghost of you is the heart of me

Yes, I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

You’re the ghost in my world eternally risen

A shadow-dancing dream that refuses to die

Yet as my tongue traces incredible the curve of your name

I am forced to recognize the horror of the lie

Your image a construct of tender hopes

Raised on foundations that were illusion

Your sundarkening smile that consumed my heart

Born in the despairing depths of my self-delusion

To raise you to such incredible heights

Beyond the dizzying sky of my lust

Was to recognize your inevitable end

In a wilderness devoid of trust

It is your mockery of eye-glinting laughter

That still shocks me marrow-deep

And follows me in shades of heartbreak blue

Into the nightly death where I sleep

I would drown to be born again

In the soft green depths of your ocean

And I would happily surrender

To your deathworld mystery

And I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

The ghost of you is the heart of me

Yes, I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

You’re the ghost in my world of heart-secret tears

Of fallen stars, shattered prayers and sorrow

Whispering the perpetual death of dreams

Revealing the agonies we must embrace tomorrow

For the sunbleached bones of love’s wretched corpse

Fade to nothing on a forgotten beach

And the moment of the rose-fire’s eternal becoming

Lays always just beyond our desperate reach

Yet my eyes still seek the distance of newborn horizons

Where the grace of your shadow may one day fall

And these words I write are clouds across my heart

My end and my beginning – my all

It is this senseless truth I am forced to follow

Dreaming your ghost and its merciful charms

As you remain the secret of my driftwood days

By which my heart and soul are forever unmanned

I would drown to be born again

In the soft green depths of your ocean

And I would happily surrender

To your deathworld mystery

And I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

The ghost of you is the heart of me

Yes, I sing you into existence eternal

For the ghost of you is the heart of me

***

I can still taste the wine on your tongue

The sweat of sweetest death on your skin

I can still see the dream in your eyes

(Infinite wonder, infinite surprise)

Tell me, how could such a love be a sin?

How could such a love be a sin?

I can still trace the curve of your smile

For which the Gods I would eternally defy

I can still see the dream in your eyes

(Limitless horizons, limitless skies)

Tell me, how could such a love be a lie?

How could such a love be a lie?

I can still feel the tender mercy of your breath

Shaping starlight to the mystery of song

I can still see the dream in your eyes

(Limitless horizons, limitless skies)

Tell me, how could such a love be so wrong?

How could such a love be so wrong?

I can still touch the sorrow of your tears

Their silver glistening heartbitter pain

I can still see the dream in your eyes

(Infinite wonder, infinite surprise)

Tell me, how could such a love cause so much pain?

How could such a love cause so much pain?

***

You remain the ghost of my shivering nights

You were the trembling silence and the pearlgrey light

You were the shining hour forever held in my eyes

You were new worlds unfolding beneath timeless skies

You were the incredible summit of my blind heart’s vain ambition

A heart now consumed with ennui and dereliction

There are no more wishes on falling stars

No more moons captured at your desire

In the willing palms of my hands

No more chasing the rainbow’s end

No more our names traced

On seawashed African sands

No more the joy of wonder, no more the wonder of surprise

For your eyes were deception coldly veiled in love’s disguise

Such emotional redundancy is a memory I can never forget

Tasting the wretched bile of self-reproach and terminal regret

I write to name the wound, to salve this despised obsession

These words unsung a lifeless parade, a self-defeating confession

Language offers no escape, is not catharsis, revelation or release

For the truth of our love was a brutal union of sickness and disease

Yes, the truth of our love was a brutal union of sickness and disease

I tell you, the truth of all love is sickness and disease

***

Emotions are exhausted

The dream itself now runs dry

The world has turned to darker days

Our truth revealed beneath impassive skies

How could such devotion endure?

Ill-founded to struggle on shifting sands

No matter the depth of our desires and longing

The prayers we shaped in gentlest hands

Our love was born in shadow and sorrow

Our hearts to the realm of suffering

We must now retreat into our secret selves

There are no more songs of joy to sing

Let the world turn on without me

Let the hours in silence bleed away

Let me gradually fade from your conscious mind

In the enduring depth of your dreams to lay

***

Let the dark water’s mercy

Close in silence above my head

For hers is the memory I can no longer suffer

Hers the memory that scars with terrible beauty

The crumpled ruin of my bed

Allow me release from this life’s bitter irony

This world of senseless grievance and sorrow

The weary stirrings of my petrified heart

The fires of passion now extinguished

The dread and hopeless tomorrow

Free me from these days of constant exhaustion

Where the twisted workings of fate’s indelicate weave

Strip away the veil, the remnants of faith

Render senseless hope’s blind insistence

The never known reason to believe

Let me drift slow fathoms deep

Away from this life’s brooding isolation

Where declarations of love’s constancy

Are futile intimacies, swallowed by the

Reality of my heart’s desolation

I desire only that I may sleep

Free from the horrors and cacophonous din

To know peace in the still silent depths eternal

By the tenderness of grace to be delivered

Of my wretched and foul bloody sin

Let the clouds now lower from their steepling heights

The final judgement delivered in sheets of chilling rain

But weep no tears for my love

For the dark waters where I lay

Is a world far distant from pain

***

We listen to the old songs

Lose ourselves to their sad refrain

The poet’s voice is cracked and raw

It is the mirror to our dream’s demise

The echo of our sordid pain

We drink to the moon in a tearwashed sky

As the stars in the gutter bleed slowly away

We drink to this life that we know is a lie

But we drink, it’s our only way

The only way to contend with our stillborn dreams

Which we shape sadly on stale breath

The only way to contend with our voiceless screams

Which we know can end only in death

No matter the bitter reflections

In the scarred and hungover dawn

We just reach for another bottle

Because that’s the way we were born

We swallow the fragrant poison

Drown our dreams in its wretched flow

Crash upon the rocks of our liquid despair

It’s all we’ll ever know

With ballads soaked in whisky

And tears of London Gin

We sit in this room of memories

And vow never to repeat love’s sin

So, we listen to the old songs

Lose ourselves to their sad refrain

The poet’s voice is cracked and raw

It is the mirror to our dream’s demise

The echo of our sordid pain

***

And now I know how grief can run away with the mind,

Leaving the body desolate as a staircase.

– Charles Henri Ford  –

‘Dark Waters’ and ‘She Was The Day Of Terrible Beauty’ have previously been published in Decanto Magazine.  ‘We Fell Away’, ‘I Will Love You For A Long Time Because You’re Holy’, ‘And She My Vision Will Again Be Known’, ‘She Comes To Me In My Hour Of Weakness’, ‘Until The End Of Days’, ‘The Ballads Are Soaked In Whisky’, ‘How Long Must I Wait Until The Ocean’, ‘Promised Land’, ‘The Ghost Of You Is The Heart Of Me’, ‘The World Is Turned To Darker Days’, and ‘The Truth Of All Love (part 1)’ feature on the album ‘The Truth Of All Love’ created with Ben Rusch.

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