For the Horror-Poem Thing: (Is free-verse, sorry...)

The Guitarist

A curling gasp of twenty lungs.
They stretch out through the forgotten alleyways,
The tattered rooftops, the crumbling chimneys.
Stain glass of reds and hints of gold
Fall beneath his feet, sticking
Through those boots of treaded mud and
Withering leaves. Pins could drop,
But they still would not be heard,
For there was no one there to hear them.
Silence in its truest form had never
Been so desolate.

Telling a story that many wouldn’t want to hear,
A bard, as one would call it-- The Guitarist is near.

Fingernails had broken off and left marks on windows
That lay scattered under their foundations.
He -snap, snap- opens the case
Where six gleaming worms grin up
And return his eager gaze.
Gloved hands reach and take them by the neck,
Resting its body on one knee,
Before sitting down on the black case
And strumming the ribs to make sounds.
They hauntingly drift over the wrecked churches,
The creaking post office, the severed markets,
And echo across the newspaper-filled streets
Where no soul can hear him.

Taking your fears and playing them slow,
Try and hide them, but the Guitarist will know.

So out of tune, yet so in focus,
So lacking strength, but still so smothering
In ways one could never understand
Unless they were there to hear it.
Unless they could even live through it.
For a mere moment, out before dusk,
Desolation no more as people linger
Inside the once-gone buildings. Their fingers,
Or what was left of them,
Tap on the restored glass, wanting to go back,
To go back to feel again, to know the definitions
Of “warm” and “cold”
Of “hate” and “love”.

Street lights, one by one, light the hollowed corridors
As the past shadows sink away, further and further
Back into the ruins of buildings and shallow rust.
Their hearts pounded inside his head,
Their fears evident, theirs hopes, disintegrated.
Several more strums to restore the image,
Those same fingers up against the tainted glass
And fogging it up with fingerprints,
The same smile he gave to them when he stopped for a second,
And watched them fade away.

He watched, he learned, he played them a song,
The Guitarist had known them all along.

Screams shook the earth as he placed
The sole instrument back in the case.
-Snap, snap- He closes is with a
Grin on his face, knowing full well
About how much hopelessness they had felt,
And yet continued to toy with their minds
And ears
And souls
And fears.
He stood alone as those mucked boots of his
Began leaving them behind to continue to yell,
To beg for eternal grace,
Even though that smile lingered on his face
Which indicated what his answer already was.

His torment, his warped self, his eyes that yearn glory,
He traps one’s soul in that guitar until the end of history.

--END--