terminus

Terminus

Lest the night and what it brought on this eve
I sit engaged in my toil, with ragged sleeve
I wiped the moisture from my weighing brow
My quell in its gest’re wrote with precise haste
As the clock, my enemy drifts time now
My being in candlelight’s supple grace
With determined eyes looked out over the mire
Returning gaze to that, the candlewick’s fire.

my manuscript’s pages absorbed my black bile ink.
as the melench’ly rose up out of the creek.
the mudded trail across the mire fell to the spate.
dripping loud, the rain thrown from the west wind,
attacked my roof with horrid sounds of fate.
my shutters slam, as phantom force spinned.
and the ether grew cold, with humic haze rose.
this once calm night razed to chaos’ echoes .

as my feet found their footing, I would tread
to the window’s view, of that which I dread
from the earth’s cusp a blast of lightning hit
the dead willow, a mirror of my place
crimson glare pierced the night, a silhouette
would lift, it started a stride with wakening pace
I turned from the view, this was my last night
I cried – I have still two chapters to write!

taken up with my pen I sat scribbling
with the hordes of knowledge that was rambling
-o’ for this pulsate in my heart, mom’ntum
rising, sending me dwelling my last hour.
-o’ foul beast, why hath chose this night to come.
please delay. can’t you see me cower
here? staring at my life’s unfinished work.
crying my body bleeds awaiting deaths’ clerk?

dipping my pen with haste into the vial.
no ink left to write, and closer came ancile (fallen)
-o’ for this my blood will now fill the page.
the garnet ink now dotted the parchment
the loss sent me into a silent rage
as the shadow begun its encroachment
screaming vile curses’ as it grew near the door
with fear i watched it enter from the moor.

harvester of dead souls whose time beckons
me now to join him on the vale of stygian’s
his gaseous presence, swayed like serpents slither
the crimson eyes, that stare out so knowing
the murky nebulas was dead black and so bitter
he stood patient with his scythe drawn waiting
-o’ thou beast of the neither world stand still
tread not close, with your cold fingers that kill

on this night I need but one more moment
to finish. And stand there o’ so dormant
for I sow that very evil seed of the tree
that filled mankind with its infernal wisdom.
of this, I scream awaiting what I see
the ever growing fires of Pandemonium
I dip this pen to finish here my life
and await what you bring, my ending strife.

the harvester slow now moved toward me
the scarlet life siphoned out of my body
and the darkness came sending me spinning
as vertigo does. the reaper came over
as I fell to crouching posture, waiting
as the borrowed knowledge would fall to trover
this once great sage, has grown and fell feeble
to nothing but his inner world of evil.

standing in a calm sway the serpents’ hiss
as I sat on the brink of deaths’ foul kiss
-please I beg, as light turns to obscurity
before you collect on my debt and reap
away; my dreams, my thoughts, my blood and misery
that filled my life. please messor make the sweep
a quick departure to my eternal rest
hand me my quell, to clench tight to my chest

for now I am ready for my last chapter
but let this cold nights’ breeze be my captor
with my last canto on this vale be death
I welcome your fingers cold touch to skin
to cough the last of my ruby lifes’ breath
Siting within the labyrinth of my sin
As the transcending colors overwhelm my soul
I left life there like extinguishing coal.

as the nights whispers leaked out of my hovel
Into the warming mornings’ new marvel
The zephyr winds mild with a morning kiss
Brought this mans’ mortal troubles to there rest
My foul remains etched in times abyss
But knowledge was a priceless family’s crest
And of this I script to my very death
But on this morning will be a new breath .

copyright 2002 jonathan ryan alligood