Lamentations of the Fallen Leader
I sit in the dark listening to the priests chanting down the halls,
They mouth prayers to their malefic Gods begging for the king's freedom from pains.
I sit within my shadowed alcove in the hallway dressed in finery and leathers,
And listen to the mournful winds whistle from the great portcullis chains.

Upon this day I finally become a man.
For this is the day that I realize I too am fated to die.
How can I, merely the bearer of a king's name carry on in his great steps?
All I can vow to the fallen king is that I shall somehow try.
 

And not a man would not ride with this king to hell.
He is the old man of the family, and I for one know not even his smallest story to tell.
 

For the king is my father.  The Patriarch of our lands and holdings.  This is his land.
In times past to me, it seemed that he ruled it with his word and an iron hand.
But that was the perception of a child, and today I have become a man.

I realize as he lies there with the wise men working over his frail shell,
That I have merely been a tiny story of his long weary life.
I wish I could tell him that I am eternally sorry for my abuse of my powers,
And I find no grief for myself, only for the people, and the queen his wife.

Today I may lose my King.  My Father.  My greatest friend.
And I wish that I was not in his army, but could be there for the end.
But the trumpets have been sounded and all must ride out into the mists,
And carry on out of the civilized lands to hells into which we must descend.
 

Because, not one man would not ride with this king straight down to hell!
He is the Old Man of the Land!  I wish I knew his greatest stories to tell!
 

Maybe this night I shall stand and cry out his name to the uncaring night!
Maybe I shall ride with the legions of soldiers into one last futile fight.
Maybe, just maybe I shall ponder why fate brings me these insights,
And has helped me to grow...

I realize now, for even with this, the last event of his wondrous life.
He is teaching me a lesson, to help me live within the uncaring land.
For love.
For Honor.
And, for life...
 

I too would ride with this king into the gaping maw of Hell.
Because, I realize that his family is his greatest story to tell...
 

So listen to this sad prince's lamentations for the passing of the leader of the land.
And cover your heart with your sword hand.

Out of Respect...

For maybe this night the king shall pass into realm of gray spirits of memory.
Maybe he shall be dispersed within the cursed magic ethers.
Maybe we shall all be left behind distraught in a kingdom without a king.
And maybe I shall never be able to tell him, I shall Love him forever...

So I cry it now into the uncaring skies and the faces of the Gods!

I shall love you forever my Father.  And I thank you for my life.

Jesus Christ's Wrists
by James O'Barr

I want a crown of thorns and seeing eyes
I want to count the sins, if that applies
I want a spear in my side, a whip at my back
Count the blows until I lose track

I want Jesus Christ's wrists
I want to double check the lists
For any angels that I missed

I want to cure the blind, so they can spit in my eyes
Paint truth on their tongues, candy coat the lies
Forgive the harlot so she can fuck me
and give the vampires teeth so they can suck me
dry

I want diseased limbs and atrophied guts
A family of ten; junkies, whores, and sluts
I want to rise from the dead
Just enough to fill my head
I want life in my chest
Redeem a few and damn the rest
I want to suck on Christ's toes
Love the angry angels, fool the saint who knows
I want to laugh until I cry
Confess until I lie, live until I die
Most of all, I want to know why

I need an empty face so that I can
Paint you
I'd put wire around my neck to
Prove my love for you
I'd cut my arms, Valentine, yes, I'd do
That too

I want Jesus Christ's wrists
I need to double check the lists
For any angels that are due

I'd suffer this all for eyes
That are true
Eyes that are blue like a
Moonrise hue

I want Jesus Christ's wrists
I need to run down the lists
For any angels that I missed

I need skin so white that light
Passes through
A barbed wire crown for the
Monsters that I slew
Iron nails in my wrists and my
Ankles, too

From the novel Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams
And the comic PINK DUST, MORPHINE DREAMS

By Buck Atkin

Rain falls down to fill your eyes,
And see them I do.
Don't think to hide your pain, but I implore
Enjoy it for now and ever more.
Because look below my troubled friend,
And see your untimely end.
Ten stories,
Brick and mortar colors,
Broken screams,
your wet grasp,
and cold pavement below.
To shatter our broken dreams...

You think to move us with your tears?
Ah, what's this?  You think me alone with you up here?
Never, for this high the angels see your rain tears too.
So give us a performance actor.  Make us applaud.
But never forget that it takes two hands to clap.
One to hold the soul up and the other to make the smack!

Rain falls down to fill your eyes,
And lends itself to create your alligator tears.
Let me caress your eyelids, and help you with your smears.
And now with painted face, painted to show no fear,
I implore you, savor the pain my dear.

Concentrate!
Concentrate on your last breath...
Remember.
Wet grasp...
Cold Pavement...
And then no more fears.
And even better, no more fake rain tears!
 

This one goes out to Elizabeth Keller!
Thanks for the inspiration baby.  Couldn't a done it without you,
(or the guy in the bar you met that night either!)

Ode to O.D.
Perhaps that last word was the trigger for your rage.
Perhaps it was the fact you felt locked within a cage.
Maybe not.  But now you are beyond rage.
You are cold.

You screamed your pain at me night after night.
I held you and caressed you and assured you that you were right.
And then lay awake crying for you after you turned out the light.
And now you are finally happy.

Chemical rushes fed through veins straight to your mind.
Liquid hell funneled through steel wasp sting in slow motioned time.
Endorphin rush from breaking a universal law and getting away with the crime.
Yet now you lay punished.

And cold kisses I now let trail upon your upturned lips.
For releasing your pain has taken away my need for your hips.
No more licking or caressing your tits.
Because you ended it happily.

I can go now knowing that you are not needing my soul's pain.
And now I can stumble around in a brighter world with sugar rain.
My plan fulfilled, I managed to kill you with my brain.
I managed to kill you with kindness.

For you couldn't take the pity of my being right.
My teaching you self worth and showing you the light.
All those happy times that deprived you of a fight.
And proved you were evil.

I feel you hovering about a damned soul trapped in this place.
A doomed wretch who watches her final disgrace.
Watch as I your lover tell you the truth of your sad sordid case.
And enjoy the pain forever more.

It was a lie.
I just couldn't say no to those hips.
And thanks to bliss,
You, I will never again have to kiss!

Demons are ruled by Fallen Angels,
and you are but a demon who didn't notice I lied about my wings.

Madame Sosostris, the famous clairvoyant,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.  Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes, Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the
Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something that he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find
The Hanged Man.  Fear death by water.

Across forlorn cityscapes of broken images and dreams,
Shattered pavements with gutters choked from innocents blood,
He flies overhead drawing his shadows forever after.

Multiple pinpricks that are stars twinkle merrily at the city's pain.
But each one forgets that it is a sun somewhere, and must shed light.
Each star casts another black shadow of him over the road from the hereafter.

For large gatherings of his and his brood they call a murder.
But is this not a grand jest upon how he is called to the lands of living?
For after all, the gods have their jests to call forth inhuman laughter.

Now murder calls forth his murder.  His brood of companions.
And now he heads into the city to find those that tempt justice.
For he must find those wily devils, but he can because he is the craftier.

Winged justice called forth to balance the scales of the world.
Some forgot that the word angel is another world for unadulterated love.
It also means messenger.  For he brings tea time to the soul like a mad hatter.

For he has no fear.  Fear is not for the likes of him.
Dark winged god that he is.  He knows the rules.  Fear is for the enemy.
Fear and pain and the rending.  Then, the quiet broken only with blood's patter.

He tracks them down one by one and brings them to enlightenment.
He sends them to their gods to be judged on their inhuman acts of cruelty.
And he finds no joy at all in their quick and brutal slaughter.

But Nietsche no longer applies to one such as him.  For he is a monster.
And those that gaze into his eyes are soon flung into the abyss.
Such is the wayward fate of those who wrong love and its daughter.

Rage.  The bastard child of the emotional tree.  The reason behind his power.
While Love remains the guiding hand behind each strike.
And he is merely given Consolation that he is the tool of rage given matter.

Dark crow that flies with wings of night above us all.
Let us now that there is still Love and Rage and above all Justice.
Fly for us on your wings and use our arms to make the evil break and scatter.

For Justice needs only a body filled with rage at love lost.
And you come quietly from your land trailing night over your body.
So for you I think of my lost love, and let rage make me madder.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is is therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.