Friday, May 10, 2013

Read On

By Mark Bishop

I've got a list of favorite places
favorite foods and favorite artists
Where you went last weekend, no idea where your heart is

I can pick out your face in a hundred photos
see your age and who we both know
from these pages black and white I have the facts about your life

I can even know what hurt you
hear all about that thing you went through
how he did this, she said that and every word could be true...

But if I just learn where you've been I miss out on who you are
These periods of time aren't just dots at the end of a line
These sentences pronounced over actions and words
These paragraphs, these chapters sad endings and ever afters
are what capture the glory behind what's authored 

If I can talk about your life but haven't lived it for a minute
careful not to touch the sticky ink upon these pages or stepping out and being in it

What good are lists and likes and looks
because people are novels not textbooks

Saturday, May 4, 2013

When the Stars Seem Silent

By Mark Bishop

On a starless autumn eve in a graveyard at rest beneath the shroud of darkness sat a maiden, fair, and sorry for life's toll
She mourned for life cast too soon into yonder field and stoney bosom
Time, anxious to leave this piteous haunt hastened onward until the moon shown bright above the leafless trees and cast it's glow on every quivering tear
They fell from beauty and smote themselves upon the sod

'round the corner of the sepulcher at which the maiden wept
a ghoul waited in silence enchanted by this twilight dirge, this fount of crystals
For a long hour he stood and stirred not as the maiden cried
And all that was dead amongst his crooked limbs and gnarled flesh yearned for life

He shambled forward startling his midnight guest
She gasped and cowered backward
Her form, pale as it was awash in the warm lunar tide became frozen and ivory
The ghoul stopped. And spoke softly.

"Tell, what sorrow spurns sleep and bids even the night to suffer broken hearts?
Perhaps two may bare more patiently the afflictions of life."
These words seemed spoken by the darkness itself, for surely the tattered lips before her were long since bled of such kindness
And yet his gaze from gentle jaundiced eyes extended to her the same offer

Seeing that, like her, he was well acquainted with death and suffered still under its heavy hand
She replied to the darkness and added to its depth
"Here lies the body of my father, his soul not yet accounted for
Perhaps the stars can tell but tonight they hide
how can hope be such a small light? such a distant thing not radiant but flickering... and almost gone"

Her words struck the ghoul where his heart should have been for he had been a father
and he had left a son
and he would come, and cry, and break his soul against the walls of stone and lose his voice among the rocks

"My dear, there is pain so great not even the stars dare answer,
Even the watchman of the ages cannot hold back the night.
But hope,
hope is like the moon,
It shall rise and show most brightly on the eve of your despair.
It harkens you to daylight and reminds you of the sun."