The Book of Counted Sorrows Read online

  That a power failure

  Would release not only

  The dammed-up night

  But also the ancient sea

  Withdrawn eons ago

  And waiting to return

  In a massive tide

  When the cola logo

  Blinks off.

  Melodrama

  A rain of shadow, a squall!

  Daylight retreats. Night swallows all!

  If good is bright, if evil be gloom,

  High evil walls the world entombs.

  Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.

  Busy Humanity

  Pestilence, disease, and war

  Haunt this sorry place.

  And nothing lasts forever.

  That's a truth we have to face.

  We spend vast energy and time

  Plotting death for one anther.

  No one, nowhere, is ever safe.

  Not father, child - or mother.

  Kiss

  Night can be sweet as a kiss,

  Though not a night like this.

  She's traveled on from me,

  Across that uncharted sea.

  I stand on this dark shore

  And of the stars implore.

  Give me that same cold kiss.

  I'll join her then in bliss.

  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  Where eerie figures caper

  To some midnight music

  That only they can hear.

  Winter Moon

  Under the winter moon's pale light,

  Across the cold and starry night,

  From snowy mountains soaring high

  To ocean shores echoes the cry.

  From barren sands to verdant fields,

  From city streets to lonely wealds,

  Cries the tortured human heart,

  Seeking solace, wisdom, a chart

  By which to understand its plight

  Under the winter moon's pale light.

  Dawn is unable to fade the night.

  Must we live ever in the blight

  Under the winter moon's cold light,

  Lost in loneliness, hate, and fright,

  Last night, tonight, tomorrow night,

  Under the winter moon's bleak light?

  The Mask

  Evil is no faceless stranger

  Living in a distant neighborhood.

  Evil has a wholesome, hometown face

  With merry eves and an open smile.

  Evil walks among us, wearing a mask

  That looks like all our faces.

  Reality

  In the real world

  As in dreams,

  Nothing is quite

  What it seems.

  In the dream world

  Or the real,

  We can't know what

  We can't feel.

  The Answer Comas After The Funeral

  The sky is deep, the sky is dark.

  The light of stars is so damn stark.

  When I look up, I fill with fear.

  If all we have is what lies here,

  This lonely world, this troubled place,

  Then cold dead stars and empty space...

  Well, I see no reason to persevere,

  No reason to laugh or shed a tear,

  No reason to sleep or ever to wake,

  No promises to keep, and none to make.

  And so at night I still raise my eyes

  To study the clear but mysterious skies

  That arch above us, as cold as stone.

  Are you there, God? Are we alone?

  Drummer

  Darkness devours every shining day.

  Darkness demands and always has its way.

  Darkness listens, watches, waits.

  Darkness claims the day and celebrates.

  Sometimes in silence darkness comes.

  Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.

  Potboiler

  There's no escape

  From Death's embrace,

  Though you lead it on

  A merry chase.

  The dogs of Death

  Enjoy the chase.

  Just see the smile

  On each hound's face.

  The chase can't last

  The dogs must feed.

  It Will come to pass

  With terrifying speed.

  The hounds, the hounds

  Come baying at his heels.

  The hounds, the hounds!

  The breath of Death he feels.

  Saving Graces

  Courage, love, friendship,

  Compassion, and empathy

  Lift us above the simple beasts

  And define humanity.

  Politics

  At the point where hope and reason part,

  Lies that spot where madness gets a start.

  Hope to make the world kinder and free -

  But flowers of hope root in reality.

  No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,

  Unless on some world out beyond Orion.

  Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.

  Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.

  Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas.

  All the words of men can't calm the seas.

  Nature - always beneficent and cruel -

  Won't change for a wise man or a fool.

  Humanity shares Nature's imperfections,

  Clearly visible to casual inspections.

  Resisting betterment is the human trait.

  The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.

  Ten Years Old, Reading In Bed

  From a blanket, the boy built a palace

  With a flashlight for a chandelier.

  Down a rabbit hole, he followed Alice,

  Where the cursing and shouting weren't clear.

  He lived stories of courage and malice,

  While the old man chased bourbon with beer.

  Riding with horsemen north out of Dallas:

  Thunderous hoofbeats would not let him hear

  The plotless rage and the whiskey diction

  And the chaos always conquered in fiction.

  Fallen Yet Not Lacking In Virtue

  Every eye sees its own special vision.

  Every ear hears a most different song.

  In each man's troubled heart, an incision

  Would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.

  Stranger fiends hide here in human guise

  Than reside in the valleys of Hell.

  Yet goodness, kindness, and love arise

  In the heart of the poor beast as well.

  February, 7969

  She died wondering

  If she were loved

  She died with her hands

  Ungloved

  By the hands of a sister

  Or her son

  Neither one

  Neither one

  We were on the highway

  In the night

  Speeding to Pittsburgh

  Stars not right

  We arrived in the crisis

  She couldn't wait

  We reached her bedside

  Too late

  My father entered

  Whiskey on his breath

  More than my lost mother

  He smelled of death

  As useless as usual

  Self-involved

  Into tearless grief

  His face dissolved

  Had I not stopped

  To eat a slice of toast

  I might have gained

  Two minutes at the most

  Had I not changed my socks

  And then my shoes

  Before responding

  To that urgent news

  Had I driven

  Even more recklessly

  Mother might yet have been alive

  For me

  Still only aching flesh

  And weary bone

  But spared the burden of dying alone

  We Ar
e All So Modern Here

  Peaches, surfers, California girls.

  Wind scented with fabulous dreams.

  Bougainvillea, groves of oranges.

  Stars are born, everything gleams.

  A weather change. Shadows fall.

  New scent upon the wind: decay.

  Cocaine, Uzis, drive-by shootings.

  Death is a banker. Everyone pays.

  All Those Snappy Epigrams On The Theme Of Night

  The whisper of the dusk

  Is night shedding its husk.

  Numberless paths of night

  Wind away from twilight.

  To know the darkness is to love the light,

  To welcome dawn and fear the coming night.

  Night has patterns that can be read

  Less by the living than by the dead.

  Something moves within the night

  That is not good and is not right.

  When I'm in the night,

  I feel the night in me.

  The night speaks with a human voice.

  To commune with it remains our choice.

  Brother night, sister moon.

  Together sing a tuneless tune.

  Anthem

  To see what we have never seen,

  To be what we have never been,

  To shed the chrysalis and fly,

  Depart the earth, kiss the sky,

  To be reborn, be someone new:

  Is this a dream or is it true?

  Can our future be cleanly shorn

  From a life to which we're born?

  Is each of us a creature free -

  Or trapped at birth by destiny?

  Pity those who believe the latter.

  Without freedom, nothing matters.

  A Thought While Reading Rex Stout

  Holy men tell us life is a mystery.

  They embrace that concept happily.

  But some mysteries bite and bark

  And come to get you in the dark.

  Cry Doom

  Is that the end of the world a-coming?

  Is that the devil they hear humming?

  Are those doomsday bells a-ringing?

  Is that the devil they hear singing?

  Or are their dark fears exaggerated?

  Are these doom-criers addlepated?

  Those who fear the coming of all Hells

  Are those who should be feared themselves.

  Dragon Tears

  Far away in China,

  The people sometimes say,

  Life is often bitter

  And all too seldom gay.

  Bitter as dragon tears,

  Great cascades of sorrow

  Flood down all the years,

  Drowning our tomorrows.

  Far away in China,

  The people also say,

  Life is sometimes joyous

  If all too often gray.

  Although life is seasoned

  With bitter dragon tears,

  Seasoning is but one spice

  Within our brew of years.

  Bad times are merely rice;

  Tears are one more flavor

  That gives us sustenance,

  Something we can savor.

  Cold Questions

  Is there some meaning to this life?

  What purpose lies behind the strife?

  Whence do we come, where are we bound?

  These cold questions echo and resound

  Trough each day, each lonely night.

  We long to find the splendid light

  That will cast a revelatory beam

  Upon the meaning of the human dream.

  Mary Shelley, No One Listens

  Humanity yearns

  Desperately

  To equal God's creativity

  In some creations

  How we shine

  Music dance storytelling

  Wine

  Then thunderstorms of madness

  Rain upon us

  A flooding sadness

  Sweeps us into anguish

  Grief

  Into despair

  Without relief

  We're drawn to high castles

  Where old hunchbacked vassals

  Glare wall-eyed

  As lightning

  Flares

  Without brightening

  Laboratories in high towers

  Keen scientists

  With sharp powers

  Create new life

  In dark hours

  In the belfries of high towers

  A Job May Not Be Enough

  Life without meaning

  Cannot he borne.

  We find a mission

  To which we're sworn

  Or answer the call

  Of Death's bleak horn.

  Without a gleaning

  Of purpose in life,

  We have no vision,

  We live in strife

  Or let blood fall

  On a suicide knife.

  The Root Of All Mystery

  Death is no fearsome mystery.

  He is well known to thee and me.

  He hath no secrets he can keep

  To trouble any good man's sleep.

  Turn not thy face from Death away.

  Care not he takes thy breath away.

  Fear him not, he's not thy master,

  Rushing at thee faster, faster.

  Not thy master but servant to

  The Maker of thee, what Who

  Created Death, created thee,

  And is the only Mystery.

  Haiku

  Whiskers of the cat,

  webbed toes on my swimming dog:

  God is in details.

  Sinuous shadow,

  she moved like hot tears,

  clear and bitter.

  Tear-damp flush of face,

  white cotton so sweetly curved,

  bare knees together.

  Moonlight on water,

  eyes brimming ponds of spring rain:

  dark fish in the mind.

  Rare albino bats:

  Calligraphy on the sky,

  sealed by the full moon.

  High looping white wings,

  faint buzz of fleeing insects:

  the killing is quiet.

  The soft shush of surf,

  conspiratorial fog

  cover his return.

  Dew on the gray steps.

  Snail on the second wet tread,

  crushed hard underfoot.

  Hanging in the fog,

  cascades of dead-still palm fronds

  like cold dark fireworks.

  Green eys growing gray.

  Rosy skin borrows color

  from the razor blade.

  Black hair, black attire.

  Blue eyes shine like Tiffany.

  Her light, too, a lamp.

  Wrapped up all in black.

  Odd color to wrap a toy -

  one not yet broken.

  Girl's face shiny damp.

  All the sorrow of the world

  - yet such bright beauty.

  From black sky, black wind.

  Black, the windows of the house.

  Does wind live within?

  Busy blue-eyed girl.

  Busy making Hobbit games.

  Death waits in Mordor.

  Cold stars, moon of ice,

  and the silhouette of wings:

  night bird seeking prey.

  Moonglow on the sand.

  Black shoes wear pale glowing scuffs.

  Should I blame the moon?

  Star, moon, and gunshots:

  two deaths here where life began,

  the sea and the surf.

  Marshals and gunmen.

  Shootouts in the western sun.

  Vultures always eat.

  Where God Goes on Vacation

  (Dear Reader: This is the first of two poems deleted with the hope

  of preventing you from going insane from too much knowledge a
nd

  to guard against the possibility of your head exploding. I myself

  have not read this poem, either, though I would very much like to

  know where God goes on vacation, because I would assume the

  accommodations are magnificent.)

  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening with Exploding Heads:

  A Tribute in Verse to Robert Frost

  (Dear Reader: This is the second of two poems deleted with the hope of

  preventing you from grinding up as sags of disgusting emulsified tissue on

  the ceiling of your library, or [if you haven't got a library] on the

  ceiling of your model train room, or [if you haven't got a model train room]

  on the ceiling of your neighbor's model train room, or [if you haven't got a

  neighbor] on the ceiling of the room where your Aunt Bertha keeps her

  collections of stuffed alligators and bronzed jackboots.)

  About the Author

  When he was a senior in college, Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction

  competition and has been writing ever since. His books are published in

  32 languages; worldwide sales are over 215 million copies.

  Seven of his novels have risen to number one on The New York Times'

  hardcover best-seller list (Lightning, Midnight, Cold Fire, Hideaway,