As the Children Laugh

There's a grove of trees inside the mind
Where children play, who've lost their way
As they succumb to nightmare dreams
Fill the air with silent scream
A land alive where blood runs cold
As they are brought into the fold
Joining the ranks of Elysium
Back to the earth from which they've come
They invent games, playmates from Hell
They have drawn up from a well
They know that they'll never go
Back to a place adults call home
Their ghouls and ghosts inhabit dolls
And place strange sounds inside the walls
Make the space 'neath cobwebbed beds
The resting place for the undead
They shriek and moan and burn and slash
And creak and boo and wail and gnash
Place fears thoughts inside your head
And make you wish you'd end up dead
You just might, and so beware
Of that grey shroud that climbs the stairs
You're the thing on which it feeds
To fill its maw and sate its needs
For as it grinds your bones to meal
And turns your skull beneath the wheel
Six feet down is where you'll lay
As the children laugh, the children play
The children laugh and children play
Children laugh and children play