Six Golden Towers

Six Golden Towers is a poem Greg wrote in early 2004. He posted it to his Mr Odd website. (Source)

Poem

Looking up, I see a man,

Pains past from before,

Yet blood still soaks my hands.

I walk into a meadow,

A place where I do not belong,

Seeking out my own crescendo,

To complete my life’s song.

I fall into the flowers,

In this land beyond all seas,

Surrounded by golden towers,

A paradise, devoid of disease.

No one is here to love my face,

For I seek none to fuel this shine,

I feel divine in this enchanted place,

One day to hold my name as a sign.

Tonight I slowly close my eyes,

Beneath the sky of blue and gray,

Blinded by my twisted desire,

A mirage no doctor can take away.

Waking in a place I know too well,

Screams surrounding every inch of my mind,

The battle for heaven bringing on this hell,

The war sought out by my own man of kind.

I’ve lost an eye and the other brings on tears,

Every day I cry, trying to avoid inevitable fears,

I stand today, as a man, fighting the devils hold.

Running to the field, random commands I find,

Ignoring the general, I pull my pistol out of its bind.

6 Bullets a round, head shots the only target I desire,

A target found, he drops to the ground,

I shoot every demon crawling out of the fire.

Fighting for a cause I hemorrhage,

Hoping one day I can live my dream,

Singing my war chant I rage,

The angels begin to fall, allied to my team.

A demon calls me into the flames,

Taunting me, haunting me, but I won’t play his games,

Those who die in this war lose there souls trapped in hell forever,

The Demons demand we give up, screaming back I yell “Never!”

Fighting till the last flame burns out,

In victory chants I shriek and shout,

Looking around I see not a heart beats but still,

And so I walk into the future,

Beyond the corpse-covered hill.

This poem is simply talking about one person fighting for a world that they desire most. The poem mentions demons vs. angels, but it does not necessarily mean evil vs. good. This poem can be referring to anything from the Revolutionary War, to a more literal battle for heaven. The "Six Golden Towers" in translation is basically "Six Bullets a Round" --- each bullet saves a life, and each bullet takes a life. If you note, I rhymed differently in alternate locations all over the page, this is because sometimes I chose to use 5 lines in a stanza rather than 4 and I was attempting to make it seem like less so the flow could run more smoothly. Rhyming twice in one sentence can push the reader along more quickly.