KENNETH NORMAN COOK

THE TRAIN
In the still, lonely darkness
of the deep night
he hears it:
The haunting whistle
of the distant train.
His throat closes,
his chest clamps
and his heart begins
to melt.
For he knows the symbolism
of that lonesome song.
She has left forever,
and the eyes
he lived for;
the voice
that filled him
with purpose;
the face...
Oh, that face...
Never again.
In the still, lonely darkness
of the deep night
he hears it:
The haunting whistle
of the distant train.
And he knows...
Now it begins.

NIGHT
His last living god
has drawn its final breath
as the sun begins
to rot to a dried-blood red
and the sky rumbles out
a deep, deathly groan
like a black apocalypse.
Watch now as he withers,
worms slithering across
his gangrened toes
while a whirling circle
of bald-headed vultures
croak out a warning
to the dead, empty sky.
His last cry of anguish
dies in the thick, choking air
as the dull, blackening sun
drops with a sickening plop.
Night has arrived
and the terror that hums
across the dark eternity
awakens an old, forgotten
pair of eyes;
eyes that cut through
the tar-like, black stench
with a hunger
about to be satiated
at long, long last.

THE CHILD

Somewhere

deep inside

the darkness

of our

ignorance

and lost within
the vast
emptiness
of our
indifference,
the tiny child
we once knew
in our
beginning
still lives;
listening
and waiting
with innocent
patience
and simple
hope.

~ [KENNETH NORMAN COOK]