End of Days
by Cam M. Roberts
I
Onwards I ride nearing the western
Skyline, hanging low to squat
In the time-still constipation, the red
Clouds scanter wildly in their rash
While the crows gambling further
Hang ‘round, inflamed are they,
Wherein an unrelenting tempest commences
to scratch the puffing fester of day –
II
It geysers out suddenly burning the outer
Rim of the horizon, screaming holiest of holy hymns;
bleeding its darkness onto the ground. It drabbles
The cracked earth to sleep as your slowing breath
catches up, along with the horse’s clacketing requiem –
III
The sun comes like a dream, soft – A scarlet broth.
Then like wisdom, retreats behind the nimbus’
Thunderheads, a wolf salivating and foaming
Quiet-like behind its keystone prey:
This is the sacrifice of survival.
The faint rays nevertheless tighten
like derelict and tarnished Teeth,
polished up for use, a gaudy solipsism.
A Nightmare – It is Here.
But it soon ends, just as it begins,
Again –
IV
The silhouette glows amid the murder of crows
While the haze of a sheer soul dissipates, faded
fragments that strike the whites from eyes, then
like the struggle of an unforeseen curse resurrected
from whence it fell to its end – Flickers on the iris rings
the wrought lightning’s purr, the electric claws nurse you
into paranoia until you seize up and behold it
through listening to its song.
A swearing off of peace, all Hell to be broken loose
Upon the return, where they shall not only inherit the earth,
But declare your light theirs as they swallow you up
and spew you out on all four stomachs of the cow.
And so, the sterile voice you hear dims, at last, the silenced evening.
This fear departs, and you go on doing as you had done,
You are not ignorant of it, it was a choice,
To go on, to go on living, fissuring the shades
on your way going out –
Whenever that is
To be.
Ubi sunt 