Keith Burks

Keith Burks Poems

The Best Poem Of Keith Burks

A Downward Spiral

…For my wife, for without her, I would be half a man. For my children, Eric, Logan, Savannah, and Marissa, without them, I would not be the father I am today.
I
Heavy are the footsteps, laden with guilt, that trudge along the dust covered and barren.

Sitting high on his throne, the blazing glory, beats down upon
his slowly moving subjects with a relentless malevolence.
Ambling slowly, the sun-scorched faceless march, marching deliberately towards the bed where his glory rests.
Dust raised from each sullen step lingers to form a deathly ambience to the grim walk.
The line of the penitent stretches beyond imagination.
Covered in dust they trod. His glory casting unbearable heat and light upon them.
Shadows, cast from circling fiends flying above, darken the line of walking damned.
Fiends, with their leathery wings, lash and snap whips of barbs.
Fiends, with their skin as dark as the thickest tar, snarl at the line from above.
Fiends, adorned with merely a loin cloth of human flesh covering their groin and a necklace of infant skulls, put fear into me to my very bones.
Fiends, connecting their wicked weapons with the flesh of the damned, cackle with a devilish glee.
I stifle my cry, when watching this from afar as I would, surely as the sun rises every day, scream when struck with such a hideous device.
The damned make no sound.
Their mouths have been sewn shut, forever silenced.
These are the liars. Those who spoke ill truths to service their own gains are these.
Imprisoned within their thoughts they are forced to march upon a desolate plain.
Naked, they have nothing to hide. Speechless, their tongues cannot weave lies.
Endlessly they march, endlessly punished.
They march straight as an arrow, beaten down by heat and terror.
…Thus begins the eternal walk of unwanted fate and the eternal damnation of Hell.
II
The panoramic of these walkers leads my eye to the path they travel on.
What, at first glance, appears to be cracked earth, now appears to be human bodies.
Dried husks, baked from endless sunlight, moaning and writhing upon the surface.
Their pleas for help going utterly unnoticed by the macabre chorus of damned mindlessly shuffling across them.
Their fingers grasp weakly at the dirt in a feeble attempt to remove the maggots from their empty eye-sockets.
“These must be those who have turned a blind eye to truth and justice.” I whisper to myself.
The road of the damned is paved with the damned.
This road continues on.


III
I stumble along.
The fear of being noticed, by the punished, grays the front of my mind like the coming of rain on the horizon.
Where do I go?
I came to be here by no normal means.
By no power of mine own.
Nothingness led me here.
Betrayed by myself have I become.
A great blackness swallowed me.
As if a hole, perfect sized for my thoughts, reached up and bit me whole.
I must stop thinking about the past.
The present is much more pressing.
IV
I take refuge from the heat and watchful eyes many steps from my last viewpoint.
The line of souls moves, but stays in place.
They move, not forward, but marching in place, an eternity of their punishment a righteous penance for their lifetime of sin.
I must move.
My chest must slow.
My breaths must calm.
They must not see me.
“What is this? ” I ask myself.
The line of souls is moving over what appears to be a bridge.
The sight is most unholy to see.
A bridge, made of humans, spans a great river of the red of life.
The humans, their hands, feet, and bodies, are intertwined.
Forming the support for the line of souls that does not progress, these entangled bodies do make.
Speechless, the souls stomp the bridge of sorrow.
Cries of anguish arise from the grotesque architecture.
Leaping up with the speed of a lightning’s strike, out of the red, are severed hands.
From each hand sprouts five fingers that grow five nails.
These instruments of terror rip through the soft flesh along the bridge.
Those souls, who now provide service to the damned, must have been those in life who forced others to serve them.
Bound, to an eternity of bloated servitude because of spending their lives as masters to all and slaves to none, they are.
I must delve deeper.
One cannot dig out of the muck without getting dirty.
Fiends, still circling, might have seen me.
I must find solace.
I must find sanctuary.
I cannot rest, though closing my eyes is a thought as alluring as viewing the goddess without dress.
The doves, unnoticed to those who punish, fly low from the distance closer to me.
Four of them, pure, white, and two on each side, pass me.
Their path leads my vision to a cove of safety.
I follow.
I make the darkened cove and refresh in the relief from the blazing glory that sits in the sky.
Cover was of no better timing.
A thunder shakes the ground with a force that skips my heart.
Lightning punctuates the bass that preceded it.
My ears deceive me.
I hear the fall of rain.
I see blood.
Raining blood, it is.
An acrid smoke rises from the puddles forming.
A boiling rain falls.
Hot enough to rend flesh from bone the blood is.
Venturing further I cannot.
The cave is safe.
Overtaken by the fatigue and sights I have beheld, my eyelids fail me.
The sound of the storm of blood calms me.
The thought of the storm is frightening.
Strength faded, resolve broken, I resign to the shadows of sleep.
To awaken from this hell would be a welcome relief.

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