Dusk & Dawn
The King of Winter
by Michael A. Casares

Feel my grasp.
Cringe as my fingers caress tightly around
thy neck.
Thy flesh seers in my frozen touch,
as a veil of mists float up from my
glacial form.
My crown lays nestled on my head
and sparkles in prisms from crystalline ice.
Thy name is unimportant-
truly it is the past.
Thy deceiving smile could no longer
capture me in bondage.
Thy pleasant nature could no longer
rapture me into hell.
For I have become one with my being
once more.
I have sheathed myself with the coldness
of time and misery.
I have been in ice by the pangs which I
mentally inflict upon myself.
And those around me at times feel my wrath
with an onslaught of winter rage
I am the Winter King.

And so I lay thee to rest,
body a wretched whore.
I have since conceiled myself behind
barriers of thick ice.
The day comes and I hide for fear of life,
but when dusk falls and the night time is upon us
and the moon shines over our heads-
itself releasing a freeze syphoned within us
as certain doom-
I bask in the glory at profusely seems
apparent.
Only in self obscurity do I dwell,
ever affraid that the sun would shine her
face at me once more.
And my heart remains in an icey prison,
performing its functions as a robot-
made of cold steel.
Bars encage the soul,
keeping the spirit from captivating the mind.
And the brain works with neither heart
nor soul . . . .