At Rest Poem by Butch Decatoria

[PLOT
on the green / Cemetery Row]

A stroll

through Carthage stones...



Gargoyles in grey gloamings

of Autumns

of Winters

of the remains of days

the done-buried

keep secret in rigor mortis

kiss



the grave

pushing up daisies, the cherished

our cherubs below tombstones

there lays

In green tarmac flights

On crucifix runways




Mausoleums with eyes

of pyramids and storms

house the ravens watching ghosts

from above just ants below,

beneath undulating cotton lakes

Upon the soil and worms and

souls


mausoleums...


As granite angels mime

upward in prayer

waiting in the weight of the lifeless

wake

white marbled expressions

consternation

of devil may care

None for statues or halos

they're capture in boxes,

coffins / all inmates

The American gothic gallows


Caustic the silences

once stories of beams of light

Such lives afire

now mere half paragraphs

in respite / despite

The unforgiving mires


[On a plot of green

in cemetery row...]


Gargoyles in the mist

these arrested flights

of wish dismissed

of effulgent life


through the spindle of an hourglass

spider-webs of fog

where I share my path

Here the haunted besides (roaming)

a land of quietude

futures devoid yet still turning

The cyclic times

The unlearned

dreaded cold below


[On a plot of green, Cemetery row...]


Rest will happen

but my spirit is a phoenix

Great flocks of birds


Asphodels


Whilst

taking a stroll...

Past plots of green,

In cemetery row


How such silences scream:

the fallen:

death's blanket of snow.


[Carnage. Carthage. Stone.]