A while ago I told you that I’d entered a competition being held by the Dark Poets Club. I was very pleased to be given an honourable mention and publication on social media by them.

It’s a piece called “Eternal Garden of Shadows”, which is from a collection of pieces that I’ve called “Life of Shadows“.

These are some my darker scribbles, and this particular piece is very dark… it contains references to violence, torture and murder, which some people will find distressing. Please be aware of this.

Eternal Garden of Shadows

Forty years, an eternity carved into flesh,

Each second a ghost haunting the corners of my mind.
In the mirror, I see the boy who never was,
Eyes hollowed, innocence gutted by your hands.

The old white farmhouse, its paint faded,
A tombstone for a childhood lost.
You, a spectre of rot and decay,
The monster I vowed to unearth.

Your voice, a sickening melody,
Tries to weave webs of pity and remorse.
But I am no longer that broken child,
I am vengeance personified; relentless; unyielding.

Dragging you through the threshold,
The air thick with memories of screams,
Your body, frail and trembling,
The fear in your eyes gives a dark satisfaction.

Each blow, a symphony of bone and blood,
Your flesh a canvas for my rage.
You convulse, a marionette on frayed strings,
Every scream a note in the requiem of your sins.

In the barn, tools of torment rusted by time,
I find new purpose, each blade a deliverance.
I carve your guilt into your skin,
Every cut a ledger of pain unpaid.

You beg, a pitiful creature,
Words slurred through shattered teeth.
But mercy died with my innocence,
And I am the hollow echo of your cruelty.

Dragging you to the garden,
The earth cold, unfeeling, like my heart.
The shovel, heavy with intent,
Tears into the ground, a grave yawning open.

Your pleas – desperate, animalistic,
Fall on ears deafened by torment.
Buried alive, the soil swallowing your terror,
Hands clawing the earth, your futile grasp at salvation.

In the silence, I hear your muffled screams,
A symphony of suffering, eternal.
The flowers above, nourished by your decay,
Bloom in grotesque irony; beauty born from horror.

The farmhouse remains a monument to retribution,
Its silence a testament to justice served.
Forty years of shadows dispelled by your cries,
Now buried in the garden, your purgatory. My peace.

(C)BobChristianpoetry