| The fragile photograph cracked and tortured—
|
| Forgotten in its box in the attic amidst
|
| A ponderous flood of memories
|
| The broken lines on her face, the years that have shuffled on
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| And on through disgust and turmoil
|
| Spiders on the lips of its slow attrition
|
| Knives through eyes that have long since faded
|
| I remember this house like a half-forgotten song
|
| A name on the tip of the tongue
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| A scar on the tip of the soul
|
| I listen to this demon as it crawls across the floor
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| Drags itself across the boards and watches me
|
| Lifting up a voice that sounds like witches burning
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| Scratching along the floorboards with a body gaunt and shattered
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| I burned them all in effigy
|
| But must have forgotten about
|
| This box covered in dust under the careful watch of dread
|
| Ghouls awash in the tattered finery of
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| Hapless pain
|
| And withered in the trance Despair
|
| Disguised as agony
|
| Conjure forth the monster sleeping long in stony silence
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| Roil the waves and rouse their denizen
|
| From an æon of splendid sleep left mercifully undisturbed
|
| Many arms about me, many
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| Pulling me into the shape and shadow of oblivion
|
| Pulling me apart and gnawing without end
|
| And tell me:
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| If the eyes of the dead are forced open—
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| Even for a second—
|
| And the eyes of the dead are allowed to speak
|
| What is the hell they betray, and
|
| What is the nightmare unsealed?
|
| What has this fragment of Reason
|
| To do with the oceans of age? |