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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