Lost

A face of steel is easy 
When hidden behind.
Lost in false hope,
Drowning under memories
That my shoulders cannot hold;
They buckle in sharp flaws;
Watch me break at dawn
And vanish into dust.
My soul entrenched
Under a cotton shroud,
Unable to rise.
I will never again stand 
So boldly.
Time, the only healer
Has stopped,
And I am lost
In forgotten thoughts
As hopelessness ensnares.
And in the dying embers
Of the vigil flame
I lay and blister
Until the very breaking of the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Austin 

Broken Alone

The trees, so hidden well by thickened wood,

While senses hide behind the deep despair,

He, ridiculed by those that can’t but should

And persecuted by those that once did care.

As fingers point and clone the loaded gun;

They choose a victim crying on his knees,

To watch him beg for solitude, in one,

And disregard his perennial pleas.

The rights and wrongs of progress blister quick

And fall apart to rapturous applause.

For paths of devils spawn are lit at wick

And decompose before his sharpened claws.

For as the darkness shrouds with efforts lost,

The poisons of the earth are thus entwined.

His tears fall hard and to his conscious’ cost,

His evolution ceases from behind.

And all the while the hands of time do turn,

He passes those that choose to stay their feet.

For oil on oceans life will always burn;

He swims and does not drown in his defeat.

But do not punish him, he knows no more,

His misery is real and chokes his breath,

For it is all he knows to thus endure

And now must live a love beyond its death.

For sadness herein sits effortlessly,

Where ignorance is thickly overgrown,

But when the clouds do lift, that’s when they'll see,

That never is a heart broken alone.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Austin

Enola

She rose into the air, roaring;

Soaring like the phoenix born of the ash

As the flash of morning sunlight kissed her wings,

Reminding them all of greater things,

Amongst such fragile beings.

Her beating heart shudders

And she flexes her steel shoulders

Shaking off long hours of inaction

For love of a new distraction

In the fraction of beauty above.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Austin

Dante's Ball

Withered gowns flutter in the acrid air,

Hair, sculpted into cathedrals

Welcomes the thralls of worshippers

At the scorched gates.

The fates have brought them here,

And now amongst twisted rocks,

To the clocks of the demons trance,

They dance.

Tortured chiffon ignites to the tune

Of wailing sirens atop pylons of bone,

Here, beneath a dome of fire.

The earthly desires of the guests of honour

Are lost under a decoration of chains,

The pains of their passing endure

As they step to the molten floor

And sway to oblivions beat.

Arrivals from the bowels of eternity

Walk morbidly through

And swarm to the palace of pyre,

Where the thief and the liar clasp hands

And cavort through quartz chasms

Below immeasurable fathoms of flame.

But eternal the hustle, boundless the bustle

Amongst souls that shall never be reclaimed.

And all the while with the most insidious glee,

The hellion conducts his most malevolent symphony.

But still they will dance, lost in the trance

Of a dancer that knows nothing more

Than the dance.

And as the spectres shuffle in imperishable turn,

Here to burn to the songs of an evil, sublime,

Until the very death of time.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Austin