NOTHING TO DISCUSS

Dying people
sleep a lot.
In a way
it’s a relief. Death
sneaks in like
an incremental
thief, idly filches –

here a tittle –
there a jot – until
the scaffolding
that holds
life up cannot.
Fundaments
erode. Slowly,

as you sit there
watching core
and carapace
implode, you find
you’re glad
you aren’t made
to talk about it.

Babies sleep
a lot as well,
and so does
every cat.
Perhaps there’s
an analogy
in that. But

thinking at
this bedside,
now, feels like
unnecessary fuss.
There’s really
nothing
to discuss.

Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett)

A PERSISTENT MEMORY

The heart is sorely laden with the ghost;
The haunt of distant melody; the song
That suffers not an octave to be long
    Unheard of man, nor lets the spirit boast
    That she is free... go fill the dwindling host
Of life’s long days with glee, and talk, and wrong —
And still, still, when that last departing throng
    Has whimpered off into the evening’s frost

    And left your heart to brood — the song returns...
The stifled spirit stirring unto madness...
    And there again she’ll stand, a fading queen —
The ghost of memory whose corset burns
    With tomorrow — such misery, barely seen!
Has there existed, ever, such sweet sadness?

Dean Anthony Granitsas (Allogenes)

FOR THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

    The Last Charge

Across the frozen lake they will come
strong and well-equipped
their blazing-banners untorn
with the want of victory
that feeling that goes away quickly
after the first battles
when the horror of it fills the eyes
stealing the peace of life
such are my thoughts
in these last moments of silence
wondering who will know
or even remember us,
what was so important to save this day,
or that we were brave to the end
but the agony of the cold will be over
and the terrible ache of home
no more to hopelessly bear
as I forever think of my loved ones
never to be seen again
yet these last thoughts of love
are still filled with gratitude
to have been blessed with the sweetness
of such tender memories
though soon, as senseless as it is
I will kill as many as I can
even in the face of certain defeat
my once beautiful life now scarred, only to die
the victors not knowing they will eventually be in my place
and the one who ends my life no different from me
for he will not forget either

Tom McCorlew (AsIDream)