Solstice

The sun gives up early, slipping out the back door
like someone who knows they’ve overstayed their welcome.
By late afternoon the sky is already bruised,
a slow-moving storm of ink and cold breath.

The longest night arrives without ceremony.
Streetlights blink awake one by one,
their halos trembling in the wind
as if even they’re not sure they can handle
what’s coming.

The world feels paused –
a held breath, a skipped heartbeat,
a hush that settles over rooftops
and creeps under doors.

Out in the fields beyond town,
the trees stand like a congregation of silhouettes,
their branches raised in some ancient,
untranslatable prayer.

The ground is stiff with frost,
cracking softly underfoot
like old bones remembering weather
from centuries ago.

Somewhere an owl calls out,
a low, resonant note that feels less like sound
and more like a reminder
that darkness has its own custodians.

And yet the night hums –
not with menace, but with a strange,
almost tender gravity.

As if the world is leaning closer,
whispering that this is the hinge of the year,
the pivot point,
the place where endings and beginnings
blur into the same breath.

People sleep behind their windows,
unaware of the quiet negotiations happening
between shadow and dawn.

But you – wanderer, insomniac,
keeper of small, stubborn hopes –
you feel the pull of it.

The reminder that light is a fragile thing,
and still it returns.
That even the longest night
has a seam somewhere,
a thin line where tomorrow
is already leaking through.

So you stand there,
listening to the cold wind thread itself
through the bare branches,
and imagine your own vow –
not carved in stone,
but carried in breath:
To keep walking.
To keep watching.
To keep a spark alive
Even when the dark feels endless.

N.P.: “More” – Miazma

 

The Democracy of Dirt

The streetlights flicker their last tired breaths

as the night settles in, thick as damp velvet.

Somewhere beyond the trees,

a siren wails and then thinks better of it.

The world exhales.

Here, in this forgotten cemetery

where the city’s glow dies at the gate,

the gravestones lean like old drunks

whispering secrets to the moss.

The names carved into them have been sanded down

by rain, wind, and the indifference of passing centuries.

No one remembers these people. No one visits.

Even the crows have moved on to better neighborhoods.

And yet the place hums.

Not with ghosts — nothing so theatrical —

but with the quiet, stubborn dignity of

lives that never made the history books.

The butcher who sang to himself while sharpening knives.

The seamstress who dreamed of Paris but never made it past the county line.

The boy who wrote poems no one read and

buried them under his mattress like contraband hope.

They lie here now, equal in the democracy of dirt.

The world never saw what they could’ve been.

Maybe one of them had a mind sharp enough to split atoms or write epics.

Maybe one carried a heart big enough to save someone who needed saving.

But poverty, circumstance, and the grinding machinery of daily

survival swallowed their brilliance before it ever sparked.

The city rushes past them,

headlights slicing through the fog,

unaware that it drives over a thousand unwritten stories.

And the speaker — me, you, whoever wanders here at dusk —

feels the tug of that anonymity. The reminder that

ambition is a fragile thing, easily crushed under the weight of

rent, illness, heartbreak, or the simple fact of being born in the wrong century.

In the end, the grave doesn’t care about résumés.

But there’s a strange comfort in that. A leveling. A mercy.

So I stand here, listening to the wind thread itself through the iron gate,

and imagine my own epitaph — not carved in marble,

but drifting somewhere between the branches:

A wanderer who tried.

A voice that cracked but kept speaking.

A heart that beat, stubbornly, against the dark.

And whatever walks here — memory, time, the echo of the forgotten — walks with me.

 

N.P.: “Worlock” – Skinny Puppy

 

N.P.: “Muck” – Die Warzau

Crack Ho

Alright, but listen:
Gotta put it in my ass
Cuz my coochie itch

N.P.: “Fight To Survive” – Megatronix

Ghostly shadows dance,
Pumpkins grin with wicked glee,
Autumn night whispers.

N.P.: “Monsters” – The Cruxshadows

In the moon’s cold and silvery glow,
A figure stirs in shadows below.
With eyes like coals, it prowls the night,
A specter born of endless fright.

Cloaked in darkness, it silently creeps,
Through misty woods where the night wind weeps,
Its fangs gleam sharp, a predator’s grin,
As it hunts for the life that sustains its sin.

Behind closed curtains, hearts quicken with dread,
For the vampire’s thirst is far from fed.
It whispers softly through creaking doors,
A chilling promise of blood and gore.

The village shivers beneath starlit skies,
Where once calm dreams now harbor cries.
A shadowy wraith with a timeless stare,
The vampire’s touch a silent snare.

In gothic halls where candles flicker,
Its presence lingers, the air grows thicker.
With every heartbeat, terror spreads,
In its wake, only cold and lifeless beds.

Beware the moon when it rides high,
Casting its gaze on the midnight sky.
For in its glow, the vampire roams,
To claim the night as its eternal home.

N.P.: “Vampires” – Night Club

N.P.: “Human Fly” – Leæther Strip

In the heart of the night, where silence reigns,
A phantom shadow breaks its chains.
The wind whispers secrets, cold and bleak,
As moonlight shivers upon the creek.
An ancient tree, with roots like veins,
Holds tales of sorrow and ghostly pains.
A lantern flickers on the winding path,
Casting ghostly figures in its wrath.
A chilling cry splits the still, dense air,
From lips unseen, a ghostly prayer.
A figure cloaked in midnight’s shroud,
Moves silently beneath the cloud.
Eyes of darkness, void and deep,
Guard the secrets shadows keep.

N.P.: “The Gypsy Theme” – Slash