The Darkest Door

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The darkness closes in again—I do not want this to begin,

try as it might, it musn't win, lest I fall back towards ways of sin ...

It tears at me with sharpened knives, looks on my form with vengeful eyes.

Can you hear the muffled baby's cries? I sit alone and utter— Why?

 

The darkness taunts me with faint light, to make me feel that all is right,

yet, I know I must win this fight, so I wage war with all my might...

It began way back in sixty-four— back in the Nam, engulfed in war

a tender lad, who days before, excellent in life at twenty-four...



 

But now, it all has gone to shit, and here I am, in spite of it.

Why can't God simply make it quit, my shattered soul, so scarred and split?

I flinch from every tiny noise, the giggles of little girls and boys,

runs through my fevered mind like glass, I want it all to end, at last...

 

The first grown man that I saw cry; my friend, Big Jim, the day he died;

a crumpled letter soaked in blood, when mortar rounds caked us in mud.

Please, give this to my wife and boy, tell both of them they were my joy—

he closed his eyes as if to sleep, I held him, then began to weep...



 

I see his face at night in dreams, awakened by my raucous screams,

I never got that letter there, his hauntings add to my despair...

His wife and son, they never knew, I'd buried Jim; he told me to

so Charlie wouldn't defile his corpse— listed MIA by the Corps.

 

I've killed more than I care to mention, with every single new invention,

the Pentagon gave Marines to use—women, old men, some children too.

Close enough each time to smell their fear, their stares into my brain are seared,

their screaming echoes in my head, malevolent torments of the dead.



 

I swear, I can't walk through that door, I can't take living any more,

but doors won't stop the darkness— hell... it knows how to get me all too well.

Big Jim—and all you others too—hang tight, Marines, I'm joining you.

Darkness whispers in my ear, come on, Marine, nothin' to fear...

 

I never hear the shotgun blast, as skull and brain are ravaged fast;

my heart then skips a beat or two, yet here the darkness finds me too.

As everything I'd know before, becomes a puddle on the floor

I thought I'd left the screams behind, that's not the case in hell, I find...

Forever, torment set in stone, I pray to God He'll call me home.

Your home is where you make it, son,  you had your chance, yet still, you shun

my offering to comfort you, there's nothing even I can do.

All those whom I had slaughtered there, just sat and watched with baleful stare...






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