The Park Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

THE PARK

I

One cold and forsaken February night
If my tortured mind remembers right
In the thick, morose and isolated dark,
In one accursed corner of a dreadful, dreary park
(More horrible to conceive and see
Than any specter from a terrible dream)
A demon named Satan smiled in a moonbeam
Beneath the bare boughs of a solitary aspen tree.
And no one being other than me
Witnessed that specter there where he stood.
In an ecstasy of fear, I attempted to flee
From that baleful and black, cryptic wood.
But that fallen angel, the evil one
Followed my steps with a glutenous glee
Above the mounds of the park, below the firmament's sea,
Beneath the dead sun,
Through a wild throng of fallen leaves,
Over a frozen, sickly pond
Surrounded by grasses where a gale still grieves.
Alone into the aura of a baleful beyond,
My spirit moaned and lament-fully did depart
Into heaven's righteous hell
Where Satan's wrathful, binding spell
Grasping, instilled
Within my empty, sullen heart
A deep and profound, eternal despair.
For his terrible touch,
His clutch,
It killed
My soul in that grim and horrid realm
With Satan at the grisly helm -
The spirit of the air!

II

Beneath shaded boughs, a lifeless maze
Among several thin and solitary lanes
Of moss covered benches near the displays
Of corpses alive beneath the skies which died
Spoke of perdition in malevolent ways.
Then, in an instant, I began to know pains
As the ground beneath me opened wide
A reedy, mystical door
Which in all of my existence,
I never saw before.
And at Beelzebub's insistence
With sharp, grasping fingers,
I was taken under the grassy floor!
Now only my name does forever echo
Carried in the nebulous, wanton breeze,
Sobbing as it lingers,
Wailing to and fro,
Over the tombs,
The sepulchers, the death rooms,
Clothed with miasmic rats and fleas.
For that demon brought me far below
Any hope of attaining life's banished chance.
And now he smiles, proudly in the dark
With his lifeless, red eyes
Grinning with a glance
Below the bane of the pale and starless skies,
Over the glades of the massive park
Where my damned soul cries
And my body lies.

III

And this demon so proud
Eternally laughs
As I contrive to uncloud
In fiery baths
The flames which consume me,
Punishing each and every deliberate transgression. -
In despair I make a futile confession.
In an astonishing, stark and blackened sea
Of hopeless, despairing, infernal dins
Which emanate like blood from my many sanguine, mortal sins
I am steeped in scorching, burning ice;
Abysmal company now forever I keep
As I gnash my teeth and pitifully weep,
Praying this nightmare will come to pass.
But alas! -
It is far too late to escape the never ending price,
And my soul burns whole below the snow covered grass.

Meanwhile, up comes the moon; The park
Lights up the mist which clings to the bark
Among the many demons, dreaming in the dark.

JOHN LARS ZWERENZ

[An excerpt from the upcoming new book of verse, 'The Grave and other Poems']