Dark Mind

By Brian Okabayashi

21st Century

All is gray and black, lifeless, pallid:
As the darkness gathers and swirls,
The flames flicker, flash
Into deep recesses, the mind dark,
The terror midnight beckons
To the land of darkness,
The Netherworld of olde!

Silence, forever silence,
Dark and turbid now are found,
Terrifying, drab, aghast:
The sword Demicles does dangle
Above my head, line thin,
Dripping ere the putrid blood,
Wretched now those
Long ago since beheaded,
The blade dismal, dark, and dreary,
Dulled, the merciless slicing,
Piercing shrieks, the horror,
Agony great, crimson splash
And carmine spatter,
Dismembered corpses lie,
The new repose,
Gaunt, the anguish in the redden'd pool
Forever lie the ripple drool.
Prometheus' doom is mine:
Fettered the stone, effigy the fury:
Overlooks the sea peril,
Where brings the forenoon
The eagles, joy antithesis:
Shredding, ripping, hacking,
Sawing, scraping:
O the vile shrieks!

The fires high so burn,
The embers bright with spite,
So earth trembles, shakes
Unto demon eyes
Glowing fierce,
Teeth honed fine,
Jaws gaping bloody, waiting,
Now hewn is Charon's oar!

Bound to my arms
The mares depravity and despair,
Run in directions opposite.

The torture chamber of the mind
Is greater than the hearts combined,
Gruesome apparitions here do wander,
Lamenting terrible drudgery: death!
Bodies, corpses, all the same
Living, dead, dying so.

Dangerous the mind when dark,
Always deeper into oblivion
I wish to sink,
But alas, no refuge in ignorance found!
The terrors, the depth, the mind,
Relentless, tenacious, tenebrous.
The seraphs in heaven avert me,
The demons under the sea beguile me,
Both in consortium, my doom,
No escape, skulls pave the path never-
ending:
Eternal sorrow,
The plague, the Black Death, the Fever
Yellow,
All better far than insanity,
The bane of my discontent.

DayPoems Poem No. 1710
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1710.html">Dark Mind by Brian Okabayashi</a>

The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor

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