THE EMPIRE OF RUINS

The crown of roses lay half buried

Tje roses smiled in sweet mockery

Reddened with the blood it shed

Reviving all the times it silently bled

The horses of war lay foaming at their mouths

Drowning in the river of their scarlet blood

Their eyes watered in unison

They had forgotten to cry years ago

Perhaps it was hell's bloodrains

Falling from their blank hollows

The willows stood there 

Empty, skeletoned and bared

They said all they saw was autumn

With leaves of dancing flames

The moat around the castle flowed with grace

A million hands drowning reached out to the air

Begging for ropes of rescue

To be sent down from the heavens

The fortress of ruins stood tall and strong

With walls of blackness and hollow stone

All can enter

But no one leaves

The survivors scale up its heights

Their skin fraying on the edges of knives

They fall they stumble they howl

Unto the fire like moths they are drawn

To burn in the silence of solitude and rust

The crows and ravens circle overhead

Shrieking and crawing in blind despair

They had been songbirds once

The songbirds who had forgotten to sing

As the clouds from the gates above

Raise their hands down this blackened earth

The empire of ruins waits in hushed breath

To be reborn again like a dawn

After eons of day

But life was too tired 

So it lay there to death

Bringing no storm of wails

But a silent hush of breath