Nine Circles By Starlight

Cold constellations

Pale, leering and eerie

In their streaming vault of ichor

Green, loathsome, now growing too close to be denied

Wrenched through the canvas

Not the maw of winter

Howling its sharp dismal terror

Tossed, blown like leaves before a cosmic gale

The pass, place of ill omen

Girded in obscure tongues

Gather your ashen cloak

Weaver of mortal thread

We, the oblation upon your slope

In blood beneath the starlight

Nine throats that whisper as one

Arrayed here upon you in caskets of ice

None shall thaw

Some pages once written can never be erased

Some words once spoken can never be unsaid

Some blood once spilled can never be cleaned, never made whole

Some doors once open can never be closed again

Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock

And Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east

But still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault

Winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message

Yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey

Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep