we’ll count the leaves on our corpses

we’re in full swing now
Our Lady Death has come
selling her sullen silence
amidst the flaming leaves
and despairing summer growth
hers are the gifts of
death and decay

i suppose i do not fear them
i am, after all, A Friend Of The Night
but i feel the heavy burden
for walking in their hallowed presence

spring and summer
bare such vibrance of rebirth
and a glowering embrace with life
that it is easy to forget
the hollowed trenches
lining our faces
and the forgotten places
just beneath the beating flurry

i feel the cold
i think
more finely then my friends
i keep them in my company
stretching
now
to bide my time with them
but the lonely road
is darker, more broadened
and the foolish nowhere destination
feels further away

i left them all
in the dead of night
only just twenty four hours ago
to traverse the space
from urban decay
to fifties sprawl
to thinning wilderness
and, finally, to forlorn farmhouse

in those moments
solemn, alone on the freeway
i fell, nearly to tears
understand
it is not some new yearning
these are glittering teeth
whose torment i have felt
no relief for
in years, decades

but rather the realization
that these are moments i want to share
to laugh at
to enjoy the beauty of
to contemplate in dual silence
and it’s a shame
that they aren’t captured
filed away in someone else’s mind
for mine is such a fickle thing
tearing down and building back
almost at its own whim
a tapestry of terror
alternating in pure joy

a single point of failure