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How are there candles burning

in these shadowed, drafty halls?

How is it that I gaze upon

the bones within the walls?

There are no parties held here now,

no balls or grand affairs,

so why do I see people laugh and drink

and talk in pairs?

The voices started softly, gently,

calling out my name.

And by the end I yelled and cried,

but no one ever came.

The halls are bright and festive now,

and full of fever dreams.

The voices and the laughter drown

the terror in my screams.

And still the candles burn here,

ever melting, never gone.

I guess I am the lighter then,

so I’ll be moving on…

The darkness is an old friend and familiar lover.

Evil slips me on like a knife’s sheath,

and the demons of dead things walk in my wake.

They whisper love as evil,

and cut to drink from feeding veins

like children with straws bent and circled

back on themselves, watching

the dizzy, helpless liquid

unable to resist the pull

of its destiny.

The darkness smiles at me,

releasing a hint of lavender to

bring me through the

noisome rot of old, toppled stones

and trees that have seen too many

secret trysts of betrayal.

It is all one to me,

a final wanton plunge into

forbidden pleasures of torture eternal,

and I am forbidden to ever return.

For I am old and lonely, child.

My time is growing short.

The fiendish things inside this place

now hunt us for their sport.

For I am tired and weary, child,

of things that chase and bite.

The fiendish things within these walls

pursue us through the night.

Well I am sick of running, child.

I think that I will stay

to fight the fiendish at our backs,

so make your getaway.

I only ask, remember me

as you live out your days,

and never use your magic gift

for learning fiendish ways.

I hear them growing closer, child.

My violent end is nigh.

To die in crimson polyglot’s

a soldier’s way to die.

Now run! Make haste! Go quickly, child.

But first, a kiss farewell.

And don’t look back to see the swarm

of fiendish things from hell.

Alone within the shadowed crypt,

I face the demon horde.

And make my peace with holy gods,

and draw my heathen sword.

I walk among preserves,

not people.

A world-weary wanderer

weary of his travels,

but restless in his soul.

These stone and ivy ruins,

these empty, rain-slicked city streets,

these brown, bare, and dying forests,

these deserts, almost empty of their sands

as if the old gods turned a

cosmic hourglass

all turn to ash beneath a

merciless sun.

I see them, these presences.

They hail me in greeting, waving as I pass,

weep in their newly refreshed grief,

and chase and curse me

in their superstitions.

Their children run up to me,

and sing to me,

tugging at my clothes and hair,

encircling me in their games

that light up their young, ancient faces,

their silent laughter fully formed in echoes of time.

They all linger just outside the senses

like lights flickering on the sea,

instantaneous glimpses

of what was,

and what will be again.

“Wait for us,” they say. “We will return.”

I long to sit, and eat, and rest,

but over it all,

the emptiness and solitude

goad me ever onward,

my own essence

lingering still among them.

I hope it brings them comfort.

They bring the dead musicians here

inside the Bardic Gates.

There’s always music playing when

another grave awaits.

Another bard to fill it,

or perhaps a troubadour…

It doesn’t really matter.

If you’re resting here, you’re poor.

Beware of passing late at night.

The music pulls you in,

and once inside there’s no escape.

You can’t outrun your skin.

The music slowly changes you

to something that you’re not.

And spirits wander restlessly

as bodies slowly rot.

The spectral dancers waltz across

the brittle, frozen grass.

But here, there’s no nobility,

nor wretched underclass.

For music is a thread of life

that stitches trouble’s tolls,

so ever will eternal Death

fill earth with Bardic souls.