Cafe de Phantasm (Sestina)

In the darkest of glooms, where no man could ever lurk,
there lay beneath a stench of miasma,
a breathless hovel where the undead gather,
and partake in ghastly brews to drown their eternal dolor.
Here, in their misery,
they shall forever weep.

In this lifeless cafe, we see the "monsters" weep.
Together, yet still separate, they solemnly lurk.
A disconsolate ghoul drinks away his endless misery,
and the smoke bellowing from his pipe entangles him in a thick miasma.
A skeleton who's lost a bone sits silently with dolor,
and if he could cry, in his drink, his tears would gather.

Outside a small crowd has begun to gather,
and all of those capable stand and weep.
A half-faced child sits outside, begging to be released from it's eternal dolor.
However, it has yet to realize that this is the domicile in which spirits shall immortally lurk.
Suddenly, there appeared a greenish miasma,
the remnants of long-time customer of the cafe's misery.

"Why must we wallow in this misery?"
The patrons sat up from their drink, and in their gazes gather,
their attentions turned toward the demonic miasma,
and for the first in a long time, they did not weep.
"Is this where we are cursed to lurk?
Why can we not cast away our dolor?"

They stood and looked, and their thoughts drifted away from their accursed dolor.
"Can't you all see?! This is not our curse! We bring upon ourselves this misery!
Though here we are doomed to lurk,
Why is it that in happiness and revelry we do not choose to gather?
We have a choice, as we always did. Yet we awaken every morning to asphyxiate in this bedeviled misery...
Each and every one of us is responsible for this dank and disgusting miasma,"

Suddenly, but slowly, there broke a light through the dreaded miasma,
a light that the Cafe de Phantasm's habitue had not seen since they purchased their first, tall glass of dolor,
and once again, they began to weep.
Yet these tears that fell were not those of strangling misery,
but rather a hopeful and joyful light that within their eyes did gather.
"In our hearts, the hearts we did not believe we had, this wretched doom shall never again lurk."

The Cafe de Phantasm had changed in appearance from a dreadful burrow of misery,
into a place where, in happiness, lighted spirits gather.
It is here, deepest within the darkness, that the brightest of lights shall forever lurk.