The Grave

“The Grave”
 
What…what would I say to friendlier ears
That I only say when no-one hears?
These shadows on my heart are growing,
And I do not know where I am going
Other than deeper into my head.
Perhaps I am dying? Or I am already dead.
 
And will there ever be another day
To break the silence around what I cannot say?
Of what disease have I tasted so pleasurably?
What illness has stricken me so delectably?
 
I have drunk of ill fountains to my own content.
And I feel the coldness, I hear the lament
Of all the handsome hearts I left bleeding,
That I licked clean with the ache of pleading
For something more than what they would want—
I needed tears to cry, I needed ghosts to haunt
What remains of the life in their veins.
 
I have a garden to watch turn to stone
I don’t know who I am when I am alone
In that secret place wilting around me,
Where the bodiless whispers surround me.
There are wounds in me that no one can heal
And I want to die in the arms of what never was real.
It’s calling my name, cutting through my sanity
And you don’t know what it means to me
To die with dignity.
You cannot say goodbye, though you can’t protect me
And though I know you would not neglect me
No one is coming to save us. You say I’ll survive,
But…I never have been alive.
And the more of me you try to save,
Is just more earth upon the grave.
 
© 2022 Marten Hoyle