rusticmonk asked for more, so here's a taste of the macabre

[Josiah Jacobus-Parker]

Fear

It doesn?t think. It doesn?t feel.

It doesn?t laugh or cry.

All it does from dusk till dawn

Is make the soldiers die.

It will not pause. It will not wait

To set you on a bier.

To make your insides turn to run

And your courage disappear.

You cannot run. You cannot hide.

There is no safety near.

The one thing you cannot escape:

That horrible thing called ?Fear.?

The Mind

A chorus, a choir

Screams and moans

?They merge

The mind sings,

Though at times it sings a dirge.

How to ruin a wedding No. 54

Not something old,

But something new.

A borrowed corpse,

Lips turning blue.

Walk it down the aisle

And sit it on a bench

On the young man?s famlee?s side,

Next to some poor wench.

Wait until she jostles him, turning to the door

And then you?ll see our borrowed corpse

Sprawl lifeless across the floor.

Death

Once,

I dreamt of death

But now it dreams of me

And only rats and rotting flesh

Can hear my silent plea.

Some say banshees are the hounds of Death,

Baying to herd their prey.

Death?s gaze? The closest thing in kin?

The ending of the day.

On my death, I give you this treasure:

The knowledge that life is hard yet too soon past.

The touch of death is never gentle

And to most it comes too fast.

For some though, it comes as welcome boon

And death?s embrace need not be cold

Creeping, slipping across the floor,

Caressing the broken, injured, and the old.

But beware anything born among the dead.

For life and death are two sides of a coin

And all that dies

Ought never be returned.

Nature is an endless dance of life and death

And life has always been the dance

It?s only fitting that death should sing the tune.

Bones you see, never have the chance.

This last one I wrote a few years back for a History assignment during a trip to the WW1 trenches in Belgium.

In the Trenches and the Dark

On watch, I stood, for the full five hours.

Five hours of fire and hell.

Then the platoon stood and charged,

And the machine guns opened fire.

Twice they charged,

And then twice more.

A whistle, a thud, the rattle of guns

And the battlefield lies still.

?Till the next troop marches in,

To charge twice,

And then once more.

Two bearers dash past,

Then the shells begin to fall.

When the smoke and dust clears,

One stumbles back.

His arm dangles as I meet

His pleading eyes.

They sent him home,

To a ?special? institute, with honors.

Freud would have a field day,

Over what we?ve seen,

In the trenches and the dark.