When end of days are darkly bled
to restless sleep and hollow laughter
of rotting flesh and living dead
When end of days are darkly bled
the hope is waning for what’s after
for sinners with a guilt not pledged.
When end of days are darkly bled
to restless sleep and hollow laughter.
And It Cannot Be Changed by Francisco Goya
As an example of a repetitive form this is a triolet… it’s too late at night to venture a villanelle. For Jilly at dVerse.
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December 6, 2018
Björn Rudbergs writings 
Wow! Love how you use the repetitive lines like a dirge; terribly effective.
Dark….. The repetition is most effective for the mood….
Tis winter in Trumpland, and gruesome shadows fall across the free world.. So a dirge is bang on, sir. Sometimes the darkness is so bleak, I feel like a blind mole searching for worms of love.
Nice repetitive line: “restless sleep and hollow laughter”
Oh, you make this look so easy. Effective use of repetition.
it conjures a nightmarish place for those still alive
I always think of a triolet as a little poetic flower – a rhyming violet – yours is of the dark variety and petal-perfect, Björn!
A triolet is like a truncated villanelle, but this one probably contains as much darkness as anyone would want.
Goya would’ve loved it.
Ooh, I got shivers reading this. I like how you used the title of Goya’s painting for your title (another repetition) and the A line: “When end of days are darkly bled” serves as what those unrepentant already know and are tormented by as a broken record in their evil minds.
Wonderfully written.
This is the drumbeat of war and violence that you have cadenced to chilling effect. Goya was documenting the disasters of war, the Mathew Brady of the Napoleonic wars, you have paced the terror and used the repetition form to drive home how little we have changed, how even if we are not the bullet-skulled corpse, we are still the puppet living corpse whether we are blindly tied to the pole or blindly following orders. PTSD despair follows us, I derive hope though from the vivid Jeremiad you have given us. War is not to be merely described as politics by other means, it is, rather a disaster, but alas – can it be avoided? Maybe just at end of days – redemption or apocalypse? All we can do is strive to give life where we can.
I like finding dark poetry, well done!
Echoing all the comments above–well done and dark indeed. The final two lines gave me chills. The Goya image is perfect.
Nice! Your use of repetition here chills like a Shepard tone in a thriller’s soundtrack.