Sad Soldier
Striking the Violin
String by string
Plucked away like a lonesome flower
With subtle pizzicato passages
Marching through the marshes
And in the trenches of melancholy
To sit down broken
As you soul unwinds
To a feast of crying games
Played upon a bogwood board
Checkmate movements lingering in the dark
Of encounters both exotic and forbidden
Trembling lungs quenched underwater
To a future of suffocation
Annihilating passions
Quick to intoxicate
As they travel through the veins
And touch the heart
And you cry
Walking in the past of forgotten innocence
Who stands in the mirror?
Who looks out of the window?
It is dark in the attic,
The door is locked and there is no light
And when God says let there be
You breathe
The candle flame goes out
Followed by those phantoms hidden in trunks
Next to reels of ancient footage
Lingering dust smell of childhood
(and grandmother's eau de cologne ...)
Boys crying wolf
Girls whispering Barbie
Between He-Man and She-Ra
The sun goes under in its rising
As down the road you pass that house
Its door hanging upon the hinges
From the chimney travels the smell of ginger
You don't know what to think!
You do not know
Not anything
Of what there is to know
When darkness descends
Speaking to you from hidden corners
Toys come back to life ...
Does the unknown person hear your voice?
Who is the bearded man wanted dead or alive?
Crucified savior and lord of the dance
Master-builder and Commander of the Grail
Saturnian Brotherhood witnessing the eclipse
Of comets passing by closer and closer
And the rain begins to fall
Ever so rapturous
And dusk begins to settle
One quiet summer afternoon
Just gone three
There is a silence of severity
Falling temples
Nations of annihilation
And looking at life
You go mad
With chirping voices
Somewhere in the back of your skull
New moon of lunatic impressions
Nightmarish rhapsody
Sung to the glory of it all
Louder; towards
Infinity of deafening decibels
Tremble!
Now the vengeance!
Then in one last moment
A gentle breath unveils
Some lost castle of sand
And somewhere there are memories
In some grotto hides the sangraal
In some wasteland rests the oasis
In some kingdom burns the longing
And with foolish caricature you draw your
sword
Towards that shadow of betrayal
Where the mirror shatters
You come to see your face
At long last you die and live a dream your own
At long last you speak a language your own
And when for the first time you listen
You hear the song of the Mercy-Bird
Chirping in the wasteland
to that growing vision of hope
(c) Steven Van Neste - 2008
