Half-Burned Holy Books

Half-Burned Holy Books
© Surazeus
2025 01 10

Ever-diminishing beauty of time 
highlights clouds of fire swirling in her brain 
when Lily walks into the empty room 
where voices of ghosts talk about the way 
sunlight causes bloody roses to bloom 
in secret moment of her open mouth. 

Safe in her pocket of sad quietness, 
her heart defines which name shall signify 
that stranger standing in the broken door 
whose book-bound story is still trapped in time, 
so Lily turns around to face the wall 
where someone wrote her name in bloody runes. 

Gazing at gold coin in her open hand, 
she wonders why her face is stamped with light 
that calls to mind the hour the apple tree 
transformed into the serpent with four wings 
and flew into the silver-flashing sky 
to drop bombs on cities of broken dreams. 

Three soldiers with guns break into her home, 
demanding that she cook potato stew, 
so she crumbles mushrooms with sly grin, 
and sits in rocking chair by ash-cold hearth 
to watch them all go mad with ecstasy 
till they shoot each other in the glass head. 

Through labyrinthine maze of city streets, 
Lily walks in tattered dress and worn shoes 
to fill her basket with old cans of food 
from half-looted stores and burned restaurants, 
then pauses by shattered cathedral ruins 
where choir of angels sings glory to God. 

Holding the skeleton key in her left hand, 
Lily stares at huge statue of the horse 
and noble king with high uplifted sword 
whose eyes see vision of the Kingdom Come, 
alone amid bombed ruins of brick buildings 
where only half-burned holy books remain. 

Pausing by the stone bridge just outside town, 
which arches over river of lost souls, 
Lily sees crumpled ragdoll-suited boy, 
so she helps him sit up and cleans his face, 
gives him apple to eat and juice to drink, 
then leads him to her home beside the lake. 

Sitting at the round table face to face, 
Lily and Wolfgang, married without words, 
eat potato stew and plain apple pie, 
decorate the Christmas tree with clean skulls 
they paint with stars and stripes in green and red, 
then make love to repopulate the Earth.