Thomas Ware

We watch. We wait.
We are the keepers of the gate.
We are those who hold night back,
Though ever foes assail us with weapons black.
...

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust.
People end in gashes,
Iron ends in rust.
...

Flame-hot blood on ice-cold snow,
Vultures caw and ravens crow.
Broken swords among the slaughter,
Hot blood and cold snow make steam and water.
...

Signs, in and around stone.
Iron, onto leather sewn,
Steel, hewed into flesh and bone,
Gold, scattered in the loam,
...

Anger, greed, or happiness,
Nothing can compare,
To the long lived emotion,
That humans dub despair.
...

Darkness rises all around us,
Consuming those who slumber,
And only those whose watchfulness,
Protects, can drive it under.
...

Deep below the lightless waters,
Far below the heavy earth,
Lurk the nameless waiters, watchers,
Seeking for the chance to birth.
...

Down, down, down,
Into the dark,
Into the damp and grey.
...

An innocent child wanders down,
A long and winding road.
He follows what he believes in,
With never a thought that he might drown.
...

Barred by breaking basalt,
Bound by burning bails,
Sit the Eld in ancient vaults,
Built before the world was stale.
...

In vast caves,
Sometimes others lie.
Man is the least of earth's ravagers.

The gaunts,
...

Seeded from the stars,
These things devour,
They live to mar but are unscarred,
Down in the deep they cower.
...

The arcaneum lies,
And metastasizes through the hope of a prize,
And when you die,
And rise into the skies,
...

The hero did embark along,
A quest immortalized in song,
A quest along a rocky road,
But where it ended, none now know.
...

I can't understand,
This longing deep within my chest,
It aches and burns and it is cold and red,
And it's like a black hole,
...

When the night falls and the evening rises,
When the day breaks and the dawn surprises,
The dark departs and the light leaves,
And left is only barren trees,
...

Loathing and contempt inside me war,
To be unleashed and spread beyond this shadowed door,
And yet though indisposed the door is yet closed.
...

Normality is an illusion;
But for those skeletons in our closets it may still remain ours;
But those dry bones do not rest easy, nay,
And return to haunt us, day by day.
...

The blood runs stale down broken floors,
The red seeps down between the cracks,
Memory of fresh and forgotten horrors,
The innocent held down beneath the axe.
...

Who is to say what happiness is best?
Many claim to know the secret,
But few that I have met can claim success.
...