THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS
from Dark Rivers of the Heart
All of us are travelers lost,
our tickets arranged at a cost
unknown but beyond our means.
This odd itinerary of scenes
--enigmatic, strange, unreal--
leaves us unsure how to feel.
No postmortem journey is rife
with more mystery than life.
Tremulous skeins of destiny
flutter so ethereally
around me--but then I feel
its embrace is that of steel.
On the road that I have taken,
one day, walking, I awaken,
amazed to see where I have come,
where I'm going, where I'm from.
This is not the path I thought.
This is not the place I sought.
This is not the dream I bought,
just a fever of fate I've caught.
I'll change highways in a while,
at the crossroads, one more mile.
My path is lit by my own fire.
I'm going only where I desire.
On the road that I have taken,
one day, walking, I awaken.
One day, walking, I awaken,
on the road that I have taken.
from Sole Survivor
The sky is deep, the sky is dark,
The light of stars is so damn stark.
When I look up, I fill with fear.
If all we have is what lies here,
this lonely world, this troubled place,
then cold dead stars and empty space...
Well, I see no reason to persevere,
no reason to laugh or shed a tear,
no reason to sleep or ever to wake,
no promises to keep, and none to make.
And so at night I still raise my eyes
to study the clear but mysterious skies--
that arch above us, as cold as stone.
Are you there, God? Are we alone?
from Winter Moon
Beaches, surfers, California girls.
Wind scented with fabulous dreams.
Bougainvillea, groves of oranges.
Stars are born, everything gleams.
A weather change. Shadows fall.
New scent upon the wind--decay.
Cocaine, Uzis, drive-by shootings.
Death is a banker. Everyone pays.
Under the winter moon's pale light,
across the cold and starry night,
from snowy mountains soaring high
to ocean shores echoes the cry.
From barren sands to verdant fields,
from city street to lonely wealds,
cries the tortured human heart,
seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
by which to understand its plight
under the winter moon's pale light.
Dawn is unable to fade the night.
Must we live ever in the blight
under the winter moon's cold light,
lost in loneliness, hate, and fright,
last night, tonight, tomorrow night
under the winter moon's bleak light?
from Intensity
Hope is the destination that we seek.
Love is the road that leads to hope.
Courage is the motor that drives us.
We travel out of darkness into faith.
from Mr. Murder
At the point where hope and reason part,
lies the spot where madness gets a start.
Hope to make the world kinder and free--
but flowers of hope root in reality.
No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,
unless on some world out beyond Orion.
Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.
Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.
Storms do not respond to heartless pleas.
All the words of men can't calm the seas.
Nature--always beneficial and cruel--
won't change for a wise man or a fool.
Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections,
clearly visible to casual inspections.
Resisting betterment is the human trait.
The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.
Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,
and morning skies had a peculiar way
of slipping cat-quick into midnight.
Those who would banish the sin of greed
embrace the sin of envy as their creed.
Those who seek to banish envy as well,
only draw elaborate new maps of hell.
Those with passion to change the world,
look on themselves as saints, as pearls,
and by the launching of noble endeavor,
flee dreaded introspection forever.
from Dragon Tears
Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things good and all the wrong
Will come right to you: it's fate.
Hear the music, dance if you can.
Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkytonk of fools.
Living in the modern age,
death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.
Ruled by violence and vice
we all stand upon thin ice.
Are we brave or are we mice,
here upon such thin, thin ice?
Dare we linger, dare we skate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate,
knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?
When tempest-tossed,
embrace chaos.
Faraway in China,
the people sometimes say,
life is often bitter
and all too seldom gray.
Bitter as dragon tears,
great cascades of sorrow
flood down all the years,
drowning our tomorrows.
Faraway in China,
the people always say,
life is sometimes joyous
if all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
with bitter dragon tears,
seasoning is just a spice
within our brew of years.
Bad times are only rice,
tears are one more flavor,
that gives us sustenance
sometimes we can savor.
from Hideaway
In the fields of life, a harvest
sometimes comes far out of season,
when we thought the earth was old
and could see no earthly reason
to rise for work at break of dawn,
and put our muscles to the test.
With winter here and autumn gone,
it just seems best to rest, to rest.
But under winter fields so cold,
wait the dormant seeds of seasons
unborn, and so the heart does hold
hope that heals all bitter lesions.
In the fields of life, a harvest.
Life is a gift that must be given back
and joy should arise from its possession.
It's too damned short, and that's a fact.
Hard to accept, this earthly procession
to final darkness is a journey done,
circle completed, work of art sublime,
a sweet melodic rhyme, a battle won.
Death is no fearsome mystery.
He is well known to thee and me.
He hath no secrets he can keep
to trouble any good man's sleep.
Turn not thy face from Death away.
Care not he takes our breath away.
Fear him not, he's not thy master,
rushing at thee faster, faster.
Not thy master but servant to
the Maker of thee, what or Who
created Death, created thee
--and is the only mystery.
from The Bad Place
Every eye sees its own special vision;
every ear hears a most different song.
In each man's troubled heart, an incision
would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.
Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
than reside in the valleys of Hell.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the poor beast, as well.
from Midnight
Where eerie figures caper
to some midnight music
that only they can hear.
from Cold Fire
Nowhere can a secret keep
always secret, dark and deep,
half so well as in the past,
buried deep to last, to last.
Keep it in your own dark heart,
otherwise the rumors start.
After many years have buried
secrets over which you worried,
no confidant can then betray
all the words you didn't say.
Only you can then exhume
secrets safe within the tomb
of memory, of memory,
within the tomb of memory.
In the real world
as in dreams,
nothing is quite
what it seems.
Vibrations in a wire.
Ice crystals
in a beating heart.
Cold fire.
A mind's frigidity:
frozen steel,
dark rage, morbidity.
Cold fire.
Defense against
a cruel life
death and strife:
Cold fire.
Life without meaning
cannot be borne.
We find a mission
to which we're sworn
--or answer the call
of Death's dark horn.
Without a gleaning
of purpose in life,
we have no vision,
we live in strife,
--or let blood fall
on a suicide knife.
from Shadowfires
Night has patterns that can be read
less by the living than by the dead.
A gasp of breath,
a sudden death:
the tale begun.
To know the darkness is to love the light,
to welcome dawn and fear the coming night.
Night can be sweet as a kiss,
though not a night like this.
from The Servants of Twilight
Pestilence, disease, and war
haunt this sorry place.
And nothing lasts forever;
that's a truth we have to face.
We spend vast energy and time
plotting death for one another.
No one, nowhere, is ever safe.
Not father, child, or mother.
Is the end of the world a-coming?
Is that the devil they hear humming?
Are those doomsday bells a-ringing?
Is that the Devil they hear singing?
Or are their dark fears exaggerated?
Are these doom-criers addlepated?
Those who fear the coming of all Hells
are those who should be feared themselves.
There's no escape
From death's embrace,
though you lead it on
a merry chase.
The dogs of death
enjoy the chase.
Just see the smile
on each hound's face.
The chase can't last;
the dogs must feed.
It will come to pass
with terrifying speed.
The hounds, the hounds
come baying at his heels.
The hounds! The hounds!
The breath of death he feels.
from Strangers
Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.
Courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity.
from Twilight Eyes
Numberless paths of night
wind away from twilight.
Something moves within the night
that is not good and is not right.
The whisper of the dusk
is night shedding its husk.
from Darkfall
Holy men tell us life is a mytery.
They embrace that concept happily.
But some mysteries bite and bark
and come to get you in the dark.
A rain of shadows, a storm, a squall!
Daylight retreats; night swallows all.
If good is bright, if evil is gloom,
high evil walls the world entombs.
Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.
Darkness devours every shining day.
Darkness demands and always has its way.
Darkness listens, watches, waits.
Darkness claims the day and celebrates.
Sometimes in silence darkness comes.
Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.
We can embrace love; it's not too late.
Why do we sleep, instead, with hate?
Belief requires no suspension
to see that Hell is our invention.
We make Hell real; we stoke its fires.
And in its flames our hope expires.
Heaven, too, is merely our creation.
We can grant ourselves out own salvation.
All that's required is imagination.
from The Mask
Evil is a faceless stranger,
living in a distant neighborhood.
Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,
with merry eyes and an open smile.
Evil walks among us, wearing a mask
which looks like all our faces.
Ticktock
To see what we have never seen,
to be what we have never been.
To shed the chrysalis and fly,
depart the earth, kiss the sky,
to be reborn, be someone new:
is this a dream or is it true.
Can our future be cleanly shorn
from a life to which we’re born?
Is each of us a creature free -
or trapped at birth by destiny?
Pity those who believe the latter.
Without freedom, nothing matters.
In the real world
as in dreams
nothing is quite
what it seems.
Sole Survivor
The sky is deep, the sky is dark,
The light of stars is so damn stark.
When I look up, I fill with fear.
If all we have is what lies here,
this lonely world, this troubled place,
then cold dead stars and empty space...
Well, I see no reason to persevere,
no reason to laugh or shed a tear,
no reason to sleep or ever to wake,
no promises to keep, and none to make.
And so at night I still raise my eyes
to study the clear but mysterious skies--
that arch above us, as cold as stone.
Are you there, God? Are we alone?
Demon Seed
Humanity yearns so desperatly
to equal God's great creativity.
In some creations, how we shine:
music, dance, stiryweaving, wine.
Then thunderstorms of madness
rain upon us, flooding sadness,
sweep us into anguish, grief,
into despair without relief.
We're drawn to high castles,
where old hunchbacked vassals
glare wall-eyed as lightning
flares without brightning.
Laboratories in the high towers,
where the doctor wields power,
creating new life in a dark hour,
in the belfry of the high tower.
Alive Again
In the fields of life, a harvest
sometimes comes far out of season,
when we thought the earth was old
and could see no earthly reason
to rise for work at break of dawn,
and put our muscles to the test.
With winter here and autumn gone,
it just seems best to rest, to rest.
But under winter fields so cold,
wait the dormant seeds of seasons
unborn, and so the heart does hold
hope that heals all bitter lesions.
In the fields of life, a harvest.
Life is a gift that must be given back,
and joy should arise from its possession.
It's too damned short, and that's a fact.
Hard to accept, this earthly procession
to final darkness is a journey done,
circle completed, work of art sublime,
a sweet melodic rhyme, a battle won.
Death
Death is no fearsome mystery,
He is well known to thee and me.
He hath no secrets he can keep
To trouble any good man's sleep.
Turn not thy face from death away.
Care not he takes our breath away.
Fear him not, he's not thy master,
rushing at thee faster, faster.
Not thy master but servant to
the Maker of thee, what or Who
created Death, created thee
--and is the only mystery.
Winter
Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,
and morning skies had a peculiar way
of slipping cat-quick into midnight.
Story Hour in The Madhouse
At the point where hope and reason part,
lies the spot where madness gets a start.
Hope to make the world kinder and free--
but flowers of hope root in reality.
No peaceful bed exists for lamb and lion,
unless on some world out beyond Orion.
Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.
Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.
Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas.
All the words of men can't calm the seas.
Nature--always beneficent and cruel--
won't change for a wise man or a fool.
Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections,
clearly visible to casual inspections.
Resisting betterment is the human trait,
The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.
New Maps of Hell
Those who would banish the sin of greed
embrace the sin of envy as their creed.
Those who seek to banish envy as well,
only draw elaborate new maps of hell.
Those with passion to change the world,
look on themselves as saints, as pearls,
and by the launching of noble endeavor,
flee dreaded introspection forever
.Along The Night Coast
Where Eerie figures caper
to some midnight music
that only they can hear.
The Incision
Every eye sees it's own special vision;
every ear hears a most different song.
In each man's troubled heart, an incision
would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.
Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
than reside in the valleys of Hell.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the poor beast, as well.
The Mission
Life without meaning
cannot be borne.
We find a mission
to which we're sworn
--or answer the call
of Death's dark horn.
Without a gleaning
of purpose in life,
we have no vision,
we live in strife
--or let blood fall
on a suicide knife.
Secrets
Nowhere can a secret keep
always secret, dark and deep,
half so well as in the past,
buried deep to last, to last.
Keep it in your own dark heart,
otherwise the rumors start.
After many years have buried
secrets over which you worried,
no confidant can then betray
all the words you didn't say.
Only you can then exhume
secrets safe within the tomb
of memory, of memory,
within the tomb of memory.
From childhood's' hour
I have not been
As others were—
I have not seen
as others saw.
EDGAR ALLEN POE
Cold Fire
Vibrations in a wire
Ice crystals
in a beating heart.
Cold fire.
A mind's frigidity:
frozen steel,
dark rage, morbidity.
Cold Fire
Defense against
a cruel life
death and strife:
Cold fire.
Days of Discovery
Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind this strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of
fear, not absence of fear.
--MARK TWAIN
A friend my well be reckoned the
masterpiece of Nature.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Courage, love, friendship,
compassion and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity.
The past is but the beginning of a beginning,
and all that is and has been
is but the twilight of dawn.
--H.G. Wells
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way
as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and
joins them by what is deepest in themselves
. --Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Fate
Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things good and all the wrong
Will come to you: it's fate.
Hear the music, dance if you can
. Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkeytonk of fools.
The Modern Age
Living in the modern age,
death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.
Ruled by violence and vice
We all stand upon thin ice.
Are we brave or are we mice,
here upon such thin, thin ice?
Dare we linger, dare we skate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate,
knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?
When tempest tossed,
embrace chaos.
A Scary Little Cottage in the Woods
Faraway in China,
the people sometimes say,
life is often bitter
and all too seldom gay.
Bitter as dragon tears,
great cascades of sorrow
flood down all the years,
drowning our tomorrows.
Faraway in China,
the people also say,
life is sometimes joyous
if all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
with bitter dragon tears,
seasoning is just a spice
within the brew of years.
Bad times are only rice,
tears are one more flavor,
that give us sustenance,
something we can savor.
Who is more foolish - the child afraid of the dark
or the man afraid of the light?
There's no use wasting energy being afraid of devils, demons, and things
that go bump in the night ...because ultimately, we'll never encounter
anything more terrifying than the monsters among us. Hell is where we
make it.
She knew the worst was never behind us. The worst came at the end. It
was the end, the very fact of it. Nothing could be worse than that. But
she had learned to live with the understanding that the worst was never
behind her - and still find joy in the day at hand.
So it is with any experience that human beings share. Each participant
perceives it in a different lesson than do his or her compatriots
Was God in error to have made His only begotten Child a man? Should
Christ have been a woman? Were not women those who had suffered the most
and therfore served as the greatest symbol of self-sacrifice, grace and
tenderness? God had granted woman a special sensitivity, a talent for
understanding and tenderness, for caring and nurtureing - then had dumped
them into a world of savage violence in which their singular qualities
made them easy target for the cruel and depraved.
What you felt always carried a lot more weight than what you knew,
emotion mattered more than intellect
Life is an unrelenting comedy. Therein lies the tragedy of it
I've already heard these stories before...only thing is, the names sound
different
It was the entire human species that seemed doomed, not just the
countrymen, and evidence of standards and dedications was heartening
regardless.
At the point where hope and reason part, lies the spot where madness
gets a start. Hope to make the world kinder and free - but flowers of hope
root in reality.
No peaceful bed exists for lamb and lion, unless on some world
out beyond Orion. Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice. Owls
acting as owls must is not a vice.
Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas. All the words of men
can't calm the seas. Nature - always benificent and cruel - won't change
for a wise man or a fool.
Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections, clearly visible to
casual ispecitons. Resisting betterment is the human trait. The ideal
of Utopia is our tragic fate.
We sense that life is a dark comedy and maybe we can live with that.
However, because the whole thing is written for the entertainment of the
gods, too many jokes go right over our heads.
Sometimes...they lived too much in a fantasy, and they made an effort to
keep up with current events...but the world was enlessly troubled and
tedious. Too few people seemed able to imagine life without the crushing
hand of on government or another, one war or another, on form of hatred
or another, so [they] always lost interest in the news and returned to
the world they imagined for themselves.
...from barren sands to verdant fields, from city streets to lonely
worlds, cries the tortured human heart, seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
by which to understand its plight
Death is a banker. Everyone pays.
We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on
We're a twisted species...we mean well and we want to do good for each
other...but there's this darkness in us, this taint and we've go to
struggle against it every minute, struggle against letting the taint
spread and overwhelm us and we do struggle, but sometimes we lose
In her hardened heart, she was surprised to find a tender place that
wasn't merely responsive to....fortright expressions of love but that
longed for more. That longing was like the profound thirst of a desert
traveler, and she now realized it was a thirst that had been in need of
slaking all her life...
Surely no one was born to love but once and never again, even if
fate carried that first love to an early grave. If creation operated on
rules that stern, God had built a cold, bleak universe. Surely love -
and all emotions - were in one regard like muscles: growing stronger with
excercise, withering when not used.
....somehow we've allowed ourselves to be ruled by the greediest and most
envious among us [reference: politicians]
....each glimpse made her heart race with fear. She could too clearly
see the skull beneath the skin, the promise of the grave that was usually
so well concealed by the mask of life.
Fear came upon me, and trembling
-The book of job, 4:14
The civilized human spirit......cannot get rid
of a feeling of the uncanny
-Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann
Evil is not an abstract concept. It lives.
It has a form. It stalks. It is too real.
-Dr. Tom Dooley
Phantoms! .........Whenever I think I fully understand
mankind's purpose on earth, just when I foolishly
imagine that I have seized upon the meaning of
life.....I see phantoms dancing in the shadows,
mysterious phantoms performing a gavvotte that
says, as pointedly as words, "What you know is
nothing, little man; what you have to learn, immense."
-Charles Dickens
Copyright © 1973, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 Dean R. Koontz. All rights reserved.
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