The Book of Counted Sorrows (7 page)

 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.

Humanity shares Nature's imperfections,

Clearly visible to casual inspections.

Resisting betterment is the human trait.

The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.

Ten Years Old, Reading In Bed

From a blanket, the boy built a palace

With a flashlight for a chandelier.

Down a rabbit hole, he followed Alice,

Where the cursing and shouting weren't clear.

He lived stories of courage and malice,

While the old man chased bourbon with beer.

Riding with horsemen north out of Dallas:

Thunderous hoofbeats would not let him hear

The plotless rage and the whiskey diction

And the chaos always conquered in fiction.

Fallen Yet Not Lacking In Virtue

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.

Yet goodness, kindness, and love arise

In the heart of the poor beast as well.

February, 7969

She died wondering

If she were loved

She died with her hands

Ungloved

By the hands of a sister

Or her son

Neither one

Neither one

We were on the highway

In the night

Speeding to Pittsburgh

Stars not right

We arrived in the crisis

She couldn't wait

We reached her bedside

Too late

My father entered

Whiskey on his breath

More than my lost mother

He smelled of death

As useless as usual

Self-involved

Into tearless grief

His face dissolved

Had I not stopped

To eat a slice of toast

I might have gained

Two minutes at the most

Had I not changed my socks

And then my shoes

Before responding

To that urgent news

Had I driven

Even more recklessly

Mother might yet have been alive

For me

Still only aching flesh

And weary bone

But spared the burden of dying alone

We Are All So Modern Here

Peaches, 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.

All Those Snappy Epigrams On The Theme Of Night

The whisper of the dusk

Is night shedding its husk.

Numberless paths of night

Wind away from twilight.

To know the darkness is to love the light,

To welcome dawn and fear the coming night.

Night has patterns that can be read

Less by the living than by the dead.

Something moves within the night

That is not good and is not right.

When I'm in the night,

I feel the night in me.

The night speaks with a human voice.

To commune with it remains our choice.

Brother night, sister moon.

Together sing a tuneless tune.

Anthem

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.

A Thought While Reading Rex Stout

Holy men tell us life is a mystery.

They embrace that concept happily.

But some mysteries bite and bark

And come to get you in the dark.

Cry Doom

Is that 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.

Dragon Tears

Far away 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.

Far away 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 but one spice

Within our brew of years.

Bad times are merely rice;

Tears are one more flavor

That gives us sustenance,

Something we can savor.

Cold Questions

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

Trough 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.

Mary Shelley, No One Listens

Humanity yearns

Desperately

To equal God's creativity

In some creations

How we shine

Music dance storytelling

Wine

Then thunderstorms of madness

Rain upon us

A flooding sadness

Sweeps 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 brightening

Laboratories in high towers

Keen scientists

With sharp powers

Create new life

In dark hours

In the belfries of high towers

A Job May Not Be Enough

Life without meaning

Cannot he borne.

We find a mission

To which we're sworn

Or answer the call

Of Death's bleak horn.

Without a gleaning

Of purpose in life,

We have no vision,

We live in strife

Or let blood fall

On a suicide knife.

The Root Of All Mystery

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 thy 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 Who

Created Death, created thee,

And is the only Mystery.

Haiku

Whiskers of the cat,

webbed toes on my swimming dog:

God is in details.

Sinuous shadow,

she moved like hot tears,

clear and bitter.

Tear-damp flush of face,

white cotton so sweetly curved,

bare knees together.

Moonlight on water,

eyes brimming ponds of spring rain:

dark fish in the mind.

Rare albino bats:

Calligraphy on the sky,

sealed by the full moon.

High looping white wings,

faint buzz of fleeing insects:

the killing is quiet.

The soft shush of surf,

conspiratorial fog

cover his return.

Dew on the gray steps.

Snail on the second wet tread,

crushed hard underfoot.

Hanging in the fog,

cascades of dead-still palm fronds

like cold dark fireworks.

Green eys growing gray.

Rosy skin borrows color

from the razor blade.

Black hair, black attire.

Blue eyes shine like Tiffany.

Her light, too, a lamp.

Wrapped up all in black.

Odd color to wrap a toy -

one not yet broken.

Girl's face shiny damp.

All the sorrow of the world

- yet such bright beauty.

From black sky, black wind.

Black, the windows of the house.

Does wind live within?

Busy blue-eyed girl.

Busy making Hobbit games.

Death waits in Mordor.

Cold stars, moon of ice,

and the silhouette of wings:

night bird seeking prey.

Moonglow on the sand.

Black shoes wear pale glowing scuffs.

Should I blame the moon?

Star, moon, and gunshots:

two deaths here where life began,

the sea and the surf.

Marshals and gunmen.

Shootouts in the western sun.

Vultures always eat.

Where God Goes on Vacation

(Dear Reader: This is the first of two poems deleted with the hope

of preventing you from going insane from too much knowledge and

to guard against the possibility of your head exploding. I myself

have not read this poem, either, though I would very much like to

know where God goes on vacation, because I would assume the

accommodations are magnificent.)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening with Exploding Heads:

A Tribute in Verse to Robert Frost

(Dear Reader: This is the second of two poems deleted with the hope of

preventing you from grinding up as sags of disgusting emulsified tissue on

the ceiling of your library, or [if you haven't got a library] on the

ceiling of your model train room, or [if you haven't got a model train room]

on the ceiling of your neighbor's model train room, or [if you haven't got a

neighbor] on the ceiling of the room where your Aunt Bertha keeps her

collections of stuffed alligators and bronzed jackboots.)

About the Author

                   When he was a senior in college, Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since. His books are published in 32 languages; worldwide sales are over 215 million copies. 

                   Seven of his novels have risen to number one on The New York Times' hardcover best-seller list (Lightning, Midnight, Cold Fire, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, and Sole Survivor), and eleven of his books have risen to number one in paperback.

                    The New York Times has called his writing "psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying." The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is, "at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. [He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O'Conner or Walker Percy ... scary, worthwhile reading." Of Cold Fire, a worldwide #1 bestseller, the United Press International  said, "an extraordinary piece of fiction. It will be a classic."

                   Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was in the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day at work, he discovered that the previous occupant of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he'd been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer.

                   He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside of Harrisburg. After he had been a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of those five years, Gerda had quither job to run the business end of her husband's writing career.

                   Dean and Gerda live in Newport Beach, California.