Snapshots

The audacious and naive,
To harvest time like maize in springbloom.
Petty scythes; dull and tainted iron,
Hacking, hacking. Fruitless labour the farmers bled.

Prized pick rationed; spoils-of-war they trumpeted!
Alas, a rancid breeze and flaying heat steals all
But the frigid decay, an artefact of rumination that
Neither feeds nor nourish.

Entwined - grapple-hooks
Eke the flesh, scale the mind.
A damning shroud; apparition of folly that binds eternal,
Graying yester to wispy now.

Pompeii saw the thick and ash, torched and razed,
A glutinous funeral, yet inked by
The caprices of history. For the stoic dead
Never tears.

Christmas

Cacophony of lights,
A gilded web; merry of men harkens
The mewlings of a thousand phoenixes.
Incandescent, a glorious burn,
Yet empty and phantasmal, dour be of greed
And insatiable pursuits.

The siren's call -
Beautiful swansong that cajoles
That same vanity, egging the fervent.
Dancing o'er the bones,
Mirthful cackling to the hollow dead, whose sockets see
Naught but rueful tears.

The child strays.
The fiendish mob licked their wry lips,
Beholding the patron with salacity.
'Come to us!' they screeched, midnight ravens
Pecking, pecking, pecking. Another stained glass;
Bloody and shattered.