The Book of Counted Sorrows Page 7
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Withdrawn eons ago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,