The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

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.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

Numberless paths of night

wind away from twilight.





Something moves within the night

that is not good and is not right.





The whisper of the dusk

is night shedding its husk.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

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.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

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

through 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.





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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

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



In the real world

as in dreams,

nothing is quite

what it seems.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

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?



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

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?



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz.

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.



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.



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.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz.

Holy men tell us life is a mytery.

They embrace that concept happily.

But some mysteries bite and bark

and come to get you in the dark.





A rain of shadows, a storm, a squall!

Daylight retreats; night swallows all.

If good is bright, if evil is gloom,

high evil walls the world entombs.

Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.





Darkness devours every shining day.

Darkness demands and always has its way.

Darkness listens, watches, waits.

Darkness claims the day and celebrates.

Sometimes in silence darkness comes.

Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.





We can embrace love; it's not too late.

Why do we sleep, instead, with hate?

Belief requires no suspension

to see that Hell is our invention.

We make Hell real; we stoke its fires.

And in its flames our hope expires.

Heaven, too, is merely our creation.

We can grant ourselves our own salvation.

All that's required is imagination.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz

Pestilence, disease, and war

haunt this sorry place.

And nothing lasts forever;

that's a truth we have to face.



We spend vast energy and time

plotting death for one another.

No one, nowhere, is ever safe.

Not father, child, or mother.



Is 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.



There's no escape

From death's embrace,

though you lead it on

a merry chase.



The dogs of death

enjoy the chase.

Just see the smile

on each hound's face.



The chase can't last;

the dogs must feed.

It will come to pass

with terrifying speed.



The hounds, the hounds

come baying at his heels.

The hounds! The hounds!

The breath of death he feels.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz.

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.



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THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

-Dean Koontz