from Dark Rivers of the Heart
from Sole Survivor
from Winter Moon
from Intensity
from Mr. Murder
from Dragon Tears

from Hideaway
from The Bad Place
from Midnight
from Cold Fire
from Shadowfires

All of us are travelers lost,
our tickets arranged at a cost
unknown but beyond our means.
This odd itinerary of scenes
--enigmatic, strange, unreal--
leaves us unsure how to feel.
No postmortem journey is rife
with more mystery than life.

Tremulous skeins of destiny
flutter so ethereally
around me--but then I feel
its embrace is that of steel.

On the road that I have taken,
one day, walking, I awaken,
amazed to see where I have come,
where I'm going, where I'm from.

This is not the path I thought.
This is not the place I sought.
This is not the dream I bought,
just a fever of fate I've caught.

I'll change highways in a while,
at the crossroads, one more mile.
My path is lit by my own fire.
I'm going only where I desire.

On the road that I have taken,
one day, walking, I awaken.
One day, walking, I awaken,
on the road that I have taken

from Sole Survivor

The sky is deep, the sky is dark,
The light of stars is so damn stark.
When I look up, I fill with fear.
If all we have is what lies here,
this lonely world, this troubled place,
then cold dead stars and empty space...
Well, I see no reason to persevere,
no reason to laugh or shed a tear,
no reason to sleep or ever to wake,
no promises to keep, and none to make.
And so at night I still raise my eyes
to study the clear but mysterious skies--
that arch above us, as cold as stone.
Are you there, God? Are we alone?

from Winter Moon

Beaches, 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.

Under the winter moon's pale light,
across the cold and starry night,
from snowy mountains soaring high
to ocean shores echoes the cry.
From barren sands to verdant fields,
from city street to lonely wealds,
cries the tortured human heart,
seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
by which to understand its plight
under the winter moon's pale light.
Dawn is unable to fade the night.
Must we live ever in the blight
under the winter moon's cold light,
lost in loneliness, hate, and fright,
last night, tonight, tomorrow night
under the winter moon's bleak light?

from Intensity

Hope is the destination that we seek.
Love is the road that leads to hope.
Courage is the motor that drives us.
We travel out of darkness into faith.

from Mr. Murder

At the point where hope and reason part,
lies the spot where madness gets a start.
Hope to make the world kinder and free--
but flowers of hope root in reality.

No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,
unless on some world out beyond Orion.
Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.
Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.

Storms do not respond to heartless pleas.
All the words of men can't calm the seas.
Nature--always beneficial and cruel--
won't change for a wise man or a fool.

Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections,
clearly visible to casual inspections.
Resisting betterment is the human trait.
The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.

Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,
and morning skies had a peculiar way
of slipping cat-quick into midnight.

Those who would banish the sin of greed
embrace the sin of envy as their creed.
Those who seek to banish envy as well,
only draw elaborate new maps of hell.

Those with passion to change the world,
look on themselves as saints, as pearls,
and by the launching of noble endeavor,
flee dreaded introspection forever.

from Dragon Tears

Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things good and all the wrong
Will come right to you: it's fate.

Hear the music, dance if you can.
Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkytonk of fools.

Living in the modern age,
death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.

Ruled by violence and vice
we all stand upon thin ice.
Are we brave or are we mice,
here upon such thin, thin ice?

Dare we linger, dare we skate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate,
knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?

When tempest-tossed,
embrace chaos.

Faraway in China,
the people sometimes say,
life is often bitter
and all too seldom gray.
Bitter as dragon tears,
great cascades of sorrow
flood down all the years,
drowning our tomorrows.

Faraway in China,
the people always say,
life is sometimes joyous
if all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
with bitter dragon tears,
seasoning is just a spice
within our brew of years.
Bad times are only rice,
tears are one more flavor,
that gives us sustenance
sometimes we can savor.

from Hideaway

In the fields of life, a harvest
sometimes comes far out of season,
when we thought the earth was old
and could see no earthly reason
to rise for work at break of dawn,
and put our muscles to the test.
With winter here and autumn gone,
it just seems best to rest, to rest.
But under winter fields so cold,
wait the dormant seeds of seasons
unborn, and so the heart does hold
hope that heals all bitter lesions.
In the fields of life, a harvest.

Life is a gift that must be given back
and joy should arise from its possession.
It's too damned short, and that's a fact.
Hard to accept, this earthly procession
to final darkness is a journey done,
circle completed, work of art sublime,
a sweet melodic rhyme, a battle won.

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 our 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 or Who
created Death, created thee
--and is the only mystery.

from The Bad Place

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.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the poor beast, as well.

from Midnight

Where eerie figures caper
to some midnight music
that only they can hear.

from Cold Fire

Nowhere can a secret keep
always secret, dark and deep,
half so well as in the past,
buried deep to last, to last.

Keep it in your own dark heart,
otherwise the rumors start.

After many years have buried
secrets over which you worried,
no confidant can then betray
all the words you didn't say.

Only you can then exhume
secrets safe within the tomb
of memory, of memory,
within the tomb of memory.

In the real world
as in dreams,
nothing is quite
what it seems.

Vibrations in a wire.
Ice crystals
in a beating heart.
Cold fire.

A mind's frigidity:
frozen steel,
dark rage, morbidity.
Cold fire.

Defense against
a cruel life
death and strife:
Cold fire.

Life without meaning
cannot be borne.
We find a mission
to which we're sworn
--or answer the call
of Death's dark horn.
Without a gleaning
of purpose in life,
we have no vision,
we live in strife,
--or let blood fall
on a suicide knife.

from Shadowfires

Night has patterns that can be read
less by the living than by the dead.

A gasp of breath,
a sudden death:
the tale begun.

To know the darkness is to love the light,
to welcome dawn and fear the coming night.

Night can be sweet as a kiss,
though not a night like this.

Used with permission.
Copyright © 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
Dean R. Koontz. All rights reserved.