The Park

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   [Excerpt from "The Grave and Other Poems" [C] 2021]