The Ghosts of Winter

Beneath a shower of autumn rain,
I taste a breath of winter,
The rose is dead, the leaves are slain,
The branches gnarled and bitter,
The shadows cast, are long and dark,
The mist that crawls, so stings me,
It's icy fingers probe my heart,
To fuel the ghosts within me.

My anguished muse absorbs the night,
Its blackness steals my soul,
My spirit is lost the will to fight,
It cowers from the cold,
With creeping stealth and frosty chill,
Fear gains the upper hand,
I shiver so, I can't sit still,
My agitation so demands.

Perceptive insight rings alarms,
The bells of Hell do toll,
I don my amulets and charms,
To protect me from the ghouls,
Still banshes wail upon the wind,
And thunder rends the sky,
As demons spit their fiery sin,
Their storm, to be applied.

Rain turns to sleet, to hail, to snow,
That drifts upon my sills,
I burn a log within my stove,
And a candle, for to kill,
The blackness that invades my room,
It's weave of dancing shadows,
A swirling mass of morbid gloom,
That fears not of the morrow.

As dawn so quickly turns to dusk,
Devoured in its infancy,
No time to grow, perform its task,
To warm the blood inside of me,
The spectres bring the goose bumps back,
To trickle up my spine,
They hide within the deepest black,
The cauldron of my mind.

Charmless tongues sing out of tune,
Their morbid psalms to death,
To steal away my bitumen,
And dowse my fire's breath,
The embers die, I cannot stoke,
The flame back into life,
I shudder 'neath my winter cloak,
As hypothermia bites.

Tired, so tired, I must sleep now,
I fear the worst has come,
My strength has gone, I must lay down,
And let fate take me home,
And if perchance my phantom's seen,
To wander with the thaw,
Please pluck a rose to remember me,
And plant it in the snow.