Wailing Heartsong

 

I sit here, screaming, every night

’till tears run dry and chest goes tight.

I sit, slight rocking, in distress

my whole soul suffering in duress

of a body resistant to time and change

and a mind long-poisoned, twisted, strange;

I sit, surrounded by shadows in murk

feeling the demons as they prowl and lurk;

regrets and sins that I’ve carried a decade

that carved in my face the lines of old age.

Rocking, screaming, crying; a soul stretched thin

taught as a bow string that could harness the wind

and fire off a salvo of wailing cries

the sound of a Banshee through the skies;

and my eyes, sewn shut by my crescent lashes

my mouth dry, teeth chattering to gnashes

and hands boring a hole with nail and groove

digging down, deep down, to try to prove

that Death all ready came, He stole in one eve

and all ready claimed my life to receive;—

and tear out my heart, I’ll show you that lifeless organ

a shell, long vacant, that,

if put to the ear,

plays sounds of the ocean.