The Hour before last

It runs and runs, in the corpse of the night
Alive in mind and venomous, fearsome in the fight.
 Careless and reckless in the telling
Un-cared for and dull in the hearing
It runs and runs, in the corpse of the night.

Coming as whisperings in the day
Fleeting and inevitable, coming without our say.
 Ghostly within our minds, creeping, gently behind us;
The ghost’s that we killed and were killed by,
In rage and fury or revenge and poignancy,
They creep, gently behind us;

It’s frosty and ice, freezing the years behind,
Forcing aggression, forcing jealously, forcing hymns of the soul.
 Confusion follows, leading hate, ahead of love, behind anguish
The voices, the words, the songs, the promises, the lies and the scenes
Flashing, flashing in iris’s renowned.
   What we once were, what we are and what we will be
Decided, already by the hour before last.

Following, tailing, Hunting, remorselessly
and
mercilessly
It hides under the Bed
Around the Corner
Above your Head
Below your Feet
Below your head
Above your feet
Haunting, following, Hunting.

It engulfs sense incapacitates humour
It gags logic swallowing reason
 It surrounds form fails structure
and breaks down
expectation
Rendering us

Alone

It tells us that
       We were once
                      The Golden Boys, who sung Golden Songs
But now we are settling as Beaten
                  deadbeat
      Castaways
                                         underachievers
Failure
                  might have been
the men who could have, would have been.

It illuminates our faults
     Highlights our inadequacy’s
                                Strangles our dreams
  Suffocates our promise
                            It tells us of faults and failures and Mistakes
Haunting our dreams eagerly.

Potential was what we were but It stops us
  from completing expectations.

                  We once hoped to reach 12
   but are stuck ticking backwards
                     anti-clockwise
  Fearing the hour before last
                            but
Equally
                           The hour after the next
Stuck

We were the Golden boys
We still shine, glossed over with
gel
and paint
and composure
and smiles
and giggles
and frowns
And normality.
We glow, we shimmer, we bloom, we glare, and gleam, and glitter, and radiate
Faked
Of course
By the intensity of our gel, our paint, our composure, our smiles, our giggles, our frowns
and
OUR normality.

We fear it and its meaning and its hell,
We run from it, we hide, we shimmy and dance from it.
The past
The hour before last
The hour after next
The memories
The future
The present
What we were
What we could be
What we will be
What we have been
What we were

That hour before last
            and that one also
 and that one

          And the next.

It runs and runs in the corpse of the night. 

Reviews

[C. Rose]

Very eerie. I like the ghosts we've killed and the corpse of the night.
I recommend reconsidering the structure. The imagery and tone are great, but the pieces don't seem to fit together and it feels long.