ZIBALDONE: Dry

I met a stranger from a distant land,

Hands ice cold and eyes fiery red,

Horns and tails and nails so cruel,

He dragged me to a dungeon's end.

Stones and floors in a place he called home,

Spoke of truce between silence and death,

Without the laughter of those I saw and felt,

My only companion was my host and his spell.

While the flowers and the birds sang with the world,

I lay dead for hours and hours without end.

And while darkness crept over what was worth living for,

He would awaken me with whispers, murmurs and...hisses.

The voice of a demon who spoke in tongues,

Thrusting needles in my veins and rinsing me in pain,

Choking me with his mighty arms and leaving me in need,

For acids and whores and silence that would let me bleed.

And the nights used to pass and the morning bells rang,

For the place he called home seemed to me the final end.

I could have gone to another world where I could rest,

To escape the troubles and the pangs of my beloved friend.

Yet one day I awoke to the shores of the sea.

Far away from any other place I had ever been.

He left me with a cup of tea and note that read;

'I may be back. Or maybe not'.

And so I inhaled the sand and the water,

Adrift and alone with the past behind me,

Solitary in my thoughts and a million miles away,

Listening to the wind blow.

ZIBALDONE