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Zainab Attari Jul 2014
The blaze of the sun cut through their flesh
Sun kissed sweaty skin and dehydrated lungs

Knelled and cried for mercy
The heavens answered their prayers

Loud thuds were heard like a roaring lion
Lightning struck like a shooting star

Their quench was put off
Soil's aroma spread; it rained.
Although I am not a lover of rains, but I am still very grateful for the rains today! Since morning it has been pouring and it has turned my warm walls and the hot air outside cold and blissful! So this is me, giving thanks to Allah for the showers of blessings. The heat was killing everybody in Mumbai! Okay, that is about how much good I can say about the rains.
To the rain fans – have an amazing time playing football in the muck and getting wet in the rains! Stay safe, don’t catch a cold :) Do share with me your experience in the rains and your take on it.
P.S. My first try at a fifty words poetry.
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game *****
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall--
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser--
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.
Aye, but she?
  Your other sister and my other soul
  Grave Silence, lovelier
  Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
  Clio, not you,
  Not you, Calliope,
  Nor all your wanton line,
  Not Beauty’s perfect self shall comfort me
  For Silence once departed,
  For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
  Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,
I seek in this great hall,
But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.
I seek her from afar,
I come from temples where her altars are,
From groves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,
Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,
And the inarticulate snow,
Leaving at last of her least signs and traces
None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.
“She will love well,” I said,
“If love be of that heart inhabiter,
The flowers of the dead;
The red anemone that with no sound
Moves in the wind, and from another wound
That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter’s daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition’s lean and inauspicious loam).
She will love well,” I said,
“The flowers of the dead;
Where dark Persephone the winter round,
Uncomforted for home, uncomforted,
Lacking a sunny southern ***** in northern Sicily,
With sullen pupils focussed on a dream,
Stares on the stagnant stream
That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell,
There, there will she be found,
She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound.”

“I long for Silence as they long for breath
Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea;
What thing can be
So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death
What fury, what considerable rage, if only she,
Upon whose icy breast,
Unquestioned, uncaressed,
One time I lay,
And whom always I lack,
Even to this day,
Being by no means from that frigid ***** weaned away,
If only she therewith be given me back?”
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,
Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went.
I paused at every grievous door,
And harked a moment, holding up my hand,—and for a space
A hush was on them, while they watched my face;
And then they fell a-whispering as before;
So that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there.
I sought her, too,
Among the upper gods, although I knew
She was not like to be where feasting is,
Nor near to Heaven’s lord,
Being a thing abhorred
And shunned of him, although a child of his,
(Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath,
Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death).
Fearing to pass unvisited some place
And later learn, too late, how all the while,
With her still face,
She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile,
I sought her even to the sagging board whereat
The stout immortals sat;
But such a laughter shook the mighty hall
No one could hear me say:
Had she been seen upon the Hill that day?
And no one knew at all
How long I stood, or when at last I sighed and went away.

There is a garden lying in a lull
Between the mountains and the mountainous sea,
I know not where, but which a dream diurnal
Paints on my lids a moment till the hull
Be lifted from the kernel
And Slumber fed to me.
Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene,
Though it would seem a ruined place and after
Your lichenous heart, being full
Of broken columns, caryatides
Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees,
And urns funereal altered into dust
Minuter than the ashes of the dead,
And Psyche’s lamp out of the earth up-******,
Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bed
Of Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead.

There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteria
Fastens its fingers in the strangling wall,
And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds;
There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds;
But never an echo of your daughters’ laughter
Is there, nor any sign of you at all
Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria!

Only her shadow once upon a stone
I saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.

I tell you you have done her body an ill,
You chatterers, you noisy crew!
She is not anywhere!
I sought her in deep Hell;
And through the world as well;
I thought of Heaven and I sought her there;
Above nor under ground
Is Silence to be found,
That was the very warp and woof of you,
Lovely before your songs began and after they were through!
Oh, say if on this hill
Somewhere your sister’s body lies in death,
So I may follow there, and make a wreath
Of my locked hands, that on her quiet breast
Shall lie till age has withered them!

                        (Ah, sweetly from the rest
I see
Turn and consider me
Compassionate Euterpe!)
“There is a gate beyond the gate of Death,
Beyond the gate of everlasting Life,
Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell,” she saith,
“Whereon but to believe is horror!
Whereon to meditate engendereth
Even in deathless spirits such as I
A tumult in the breath,
A chilling of the inexhaustible blood
Even in my veins that never will be dry,
And in the austere, divine monotony
That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.

This is her province whom you lack and seek;
And seek her not elsewhere.
Hell is a thoroughfare
For pilgrims,—Herakles,
And he that loved Euridice too well,
Have walked therein; and many more than these;
And witnessed the desire and the despair
Of souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air;
You, too, have entered Hell,
And issued thence; but thence whereof I speak
None has returned;—for thither fury brings
Only the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things.
Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there.”

Oh, radiant Song!  Oh, gracious Memory!
Be long upon this height
I shall not climb again!
I know the way you mean,—the little night,
And the long empty day,—never to see
Again the angry light,
Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain!
Ah, but she,
Your other sister and my other soul,
She shall again be mine;
And I shall drink her from a silver bowl,
A chilly thin green wine,
Not bitter to the taste,
Not sweet,
Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,—
To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth—
But savoring faintly of the acid earth,
And trod by pensive feet
From perfect clusters ripened without haste
Out of the urgent heat
In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine.

Lift up your lyres!  Sing on!
But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone.
The First Voice

HE trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:

It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat,

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine.

"To dine!" she sneered in acid tone.
"To bend thy being to a bone
Clothed in a radiance not its own!"

The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within.

"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea."

And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'"

He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought "That I could get away!"
Strove with the thought "But I must stay.

"To dine!" she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
"To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth!

"Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the gormandising troup
Who find a solace in the soup?

"Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff."

"Yet well-bred men," he faintly said,
"Are not willing to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread."

Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:
"There are," she said, "a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.

"Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there:

"We grant them - there is no escape -
A sort of semi-human shape
Suggestive of the man-like Ape."

"In all such theories," said he,
"One fixed exception there must be.
That is, the Present Company."

Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark.

She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and main
To get the upper hand again.

Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
As though unconscious of his speech,
She said "Each gives to more than each."

He could not answer yea or nay:
He faltered "Gifts may pass away."
Yet knew not what he meant to say.

"If that be so," she straight replied,
"Each heart with each doth coincide.
What boots it? For the world is wide."

"The world is but a Thought," said he:
"The vast unfathomable sea
Is but a Notion - unto me."

And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead.

"The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.

"The man that smokes - that reads the TIMES -
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes -
Is capable of ANY crimes!"

He felt it was his turn to speak,
And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,
Moaned "This is harder than Bezique!"

But when she asked him "Wherefore so?"
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned "I do not know."

While, like broad waves of golden grain,
Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,
His colour came and went again.

Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said "The More exceeds the Less."

"A truth of such undoubted weight,"
He urged, "and so extreme in date,
It were superfluous to state."

Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
"To others, yea: but not to thee."

But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged "For pity's sake!"
Once more in gentle tones she spake.

"Thought in the mind doth still abide
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide:

"And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow:

"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought."

So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face.

The Second Voice

THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech

She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.

She urged "No cheese is made of chalk":
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.

Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him "Which?"
It mounted to its highest pitch.

He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
Lost in the echoes of the cave.

He answered her he knew not what:
Like shaft from bow at random shot,
He spoke, but she regarded not.

She waited not for his reply,
But with a downward leaden eye
Went on as if he were not by

Sound argument and grave defence,
Strange questions raised on "Why?" and "Whence?"
And wildly tangled evidence.

When he, with racked and whirling brain,
Feebly implored her to explain,
She simply said it all again.

Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
And careless of all consequence:

"Mind - I believe - is Essence - Ent -
Abstract - that is - an Accident -
Which we - that is to say - I meant - "

When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.

It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly.

While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird.

Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own.

"Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other thoughts no thought but this,
Harmonious dews of sober bliss?

"What boots it? Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by?

"And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare?

"The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night?

"Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years,

"And hear the sounds he knew of yore,
Old shufflings on the sanded floor,
Old knuckles tapping at the door?

"Yet still before him as he flies
One pallid form shall ever rise,
And, bodying forth in glassy eyes

"The vision of a vanished good,
Low peering through the tangled wood,
Shall freeze the current of his blood."

Still from each fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched some slow reluctant truth.

Till, like a silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still.

Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,
As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus:

When, for the tumult of the street,
Is heard the engine's stifled beat,
The velvet tread of porters' feet.

With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips without a sound,
And every now and then she frowned.

He gazed upon the sleeping sea,
And joyed in its tranquillity,
And in that silence dead, but she

To muse a little space did seem,
Then, like the echo of a dream,
Harked back upon her threadbare theme.

Still an attentive ear he lent
But could not fathom what she meant:
She was not deep, nor eloquent.

He marked the ripple on the sand:
The even swaying of her hand
Was all that he could understand.

He saw in dreams a drawing-room,
Where thirteen wretches sat in gloom,
Waiting - he thought he knew for whom:

He saw them drooping here and there,
Each feebly huddled on a chair,
In attitudes of blank despair:

Oysters were not more mute than they,
For all their brains were pumped away,
And they had nothing more to say -

Save one, who groaned "Three hours are gone!"
Who shrieked "We'll wait no longer, John!
Tell them to set the dinner on!"

The vision passed: the ghosts were fled:
He saw once more that woman dread:
He heard once more the words she said.

He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
Across the shores so newly dried.

He wondered at the waters clear,
The breeze that whispered in his ear,
The billows heaving far and near,

And why he had so long preferred
To hang upon her every word:
"In truth," he said, "it was absurd."

The Third Voice

NOT long this transport held its place:
Within a little moment's space
Quick tears were raining down his face

His heart stood still, aghast with fear;
A wordless voice, nor far nor near,
He seemed to hear and not to hear.

"Tears kindle not the doubtful spark.
If so, why not? Of this remark
The bearings are profoundly dark."

"Her speech," he said, "hath caused this pain.
Easier I count it to explain
The jargon of the howling main,

"Or, stretched beside some babbling brook,
To con, with inexpressive look,
An unintelligible book."

Low spake the voice within his head,
In words imagined more than said,
Soundless as ghost's intended tread:

"If thou art duller than before,
Why quittedst thou the voice of lore?
Why not endure, expecting more?"

"Rather than that," he groaned aghast,
"I'd writhe in depths of cavern vast,
Some loathly vampire's rich repast."

"'Twere hard," it answered, "themes immense
To coop within the narrow fence
That rings THY scant intelligence."

"Not so," he urged, "nor once alone:
But there was something in her tone
That chilled me to the very bone.

"Her style was anything but clear,
And most unpleasantly severe;
Her epithets were very queer.

"And yet, so grand were her replies,
I could not choose but deem her wise;
I did not dare to criticise;

"Nor did I leave her, till she went
So deep in tangled argument
That all my powers of thought were spent."

A little whisper inly slid,
"Yet truth is truth: you know you did."
A little wink beneath the lid.

And, sickened with excess of dread,
Prone to the dust he bent his head,
And lay like one three-quarters dead

The whisper left him - like a breeze
Lost in the depths of leafy trees -
Left him by no means at his ease.

Once more he weltered in despair,
With hands, through denser-matted hair,
More tightly clenched than then they were.

When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
"Tell me my fault," was all he said.

When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.

And when at Eve the unpitying sun
Smiled grimly on the solemn fun,
"Alack," he sighed, "what HAVE I done?"

But saddest, darkest was the sight,
When the cold grasp of leaden Night
Dashed him to earth, and held him tight.

Tortured, unaided, and alone,
Thunders were silence to his groan,
Bagpipes sweet music to its tone:

"What? Ever thus, in dismal round,
Shall Pain and Mystery profound
Pursue me like a sleepless hound,

"With crimson-dashed and eager jaws,
Me, still in ignorance of the cause,
Unknowing what I broke of laws?"

The whisper to his ear did seem
Like echoed flow of silent stream,
Or shadow of forgotten dream,

The whisper trembling in the wind:
"Her fate with thine was intertwined,"
So spake it in his inner mind:

"Each orbed on each a baleful star:
Each proved the other's blight and bar:
Each unto each were best, most far:

"Yea, each to each was worse than foe:
Thou, a scared dullard, gibbering low,
AND SHE, AN AVALANCHE OF WOE!"
Nodding, nodding 'pon thy stem,
Thou bloom o' morn; nodding, nodding
To the bees, asearch o' honey's sweet.
Wilt thou to droop, and wilt the dance o' thee
To vanish with the going o' the day?
Hath the tearing o' the air o' thy sharped thorn
Sent musics up unto the bright,
Or doth thy dance to mean anaught
Save breeze-kiss 'pon thy bloom?
Hath yonder songster harked to thee,
And doth he sing thy love? Or hath he tuned
His song of world's wailing o' the day?
Doth mom shew thee naught save thy garden's wall,
That shutteth thee away, a treasure o' thy day?
Doth yonder hum then spell anaught,
Save whirring o' the wing that hovereth
O'er thy bud to sup the sweet?
Ah, garden's deep, afulled o' fairie's word,
And creeped o’er with winged mites, where but
The raindrop's patter telleth thee His love—
Doth all this vanish then, at closing o' the day?
Anay. For He hath made a one who seeketh here,
And storeth drops, and song, and hum, and sweets,
And of these weaveth garland for the earth.
From off his lute doth drip the day of Him!
CA Guilfoyle Aug 2013
The Harvest Bow

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game *****
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser—
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

by Seamus Heaney
S S Jan 2017
Clacks the train on pre-made track
Taps she on and on all day
Wheel on rail, turns wheel on rail
Never wavering from laid out trail.

Clacks the train on pre-made track
Oft taking souls both to and fro
Alas unseen goes the weary rail
As metal cuts through the nestled nail.

Clacks the train on pre-made track
The unjoining joint harked too late
Souls on board feel blinding pain
As loco veers off its destined lane.

Clacks she no more on pre-made track
Unhinged, undone, has no path, no role
Bent beyond all blacksmith skill
Now left soulless, without way or will.
‘Tis this,
Christmas
morn at the end
of that clutch of days
Christians named 2010,
and the diffident sky
can only manage
one irreverent blink.

There they're here,
candy cane lights
with green-garland ears
and drunken noses
to point my way through
snow-drop-hushed streets
robbed of their rush-about
and vagrant shouts.

Then’s when
I’ll take it,
the harked-upon angels’
high stool, and make low
the hollered occasion
with a devilish wink
to swivel
their pin-cushion heads:

“Yay, I say,
for unto you is born
this day, in the city of laid
lids, a savor!
Look for true
love in the cradle
of your straw-strewn hearth,
and unswaddle it.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Tita Halaman Jan 2018
Henceforth all shameful outbursts
Thenceforward my final death
Jilt, she made me play with fire
Wooed by appalling words she said

She, i ween, is no beautiful
She, i ween, is no enchanting
Yet, she is her dreamer, she is her art
Ergo since farewell, once deaf harked

After the dreamer, after the art
Sniffer cheated, sinner starved
Naked I mourned, naked I yowled
Lost faith from Agave, still fresh from the yard
Afeli May 2018
Remarkably colossal
Nevertheless endeared in my embrace, I comf'rt and buss't
Harked't breathe s'renly
Gazed't making itself rested.
Wherefore thee ask
F'r I'm infinitely devoted to the moon.
To mine own moon.
I'm in love with 'the moon' and my boyfriend is my moon.
YoussefM Oct 2017
Everytime i die and live during the time i harked  you weeping
Your eyes betrayed you by saying " i'm fine ".
Your heartache is my foe .
I dare everyone who was the reason of one  tear drop from all your tears i would dug a deep well of tears in their heart to taste the taste of tears That their eyes never get dry .
I wished if i would be the reason of your sorrow i would **** me and you live happy
neth jones Oct 2019
Little shadow
         harked madam

a bird who wears her wings
only as wardrobe
  (though she dreams
   in fits
of infantasy)

  dusty in her bedroom
in trust to her headspace
      an attic dweller

    home school tutored
a burden to her wellspring
   and buried to her title

                      averted
         feet behind the curtain
little shadow
         with the unclaimed
the name of
            Elizabeth

               **

         A foe in the night
an aviary of the berserk :
          vocal nicker
and disputes at high frenzy
  lend from her garret

uneasy on the household
coughing up all of the family
  cussing from their berths

the awoken
shamble and mumble in the hallway
  move in a broken thread up to her attic
   they’ll crack open her privacy
     and find her fast out on the bedding

you can’t spell that to her ghost
        in Elizabeth’s sleep
    it’s sprung from its host

a living haunting
a messed up devotion
  expresses itself on the family
   enforces itself emotionally

the hallways are trailed
    with dried flowers
   and stinging nettles

don’t tread the halls at night
without a pair of slippers
Saman Badam Dec 2024
A forlorn mule ambled a’ scowl,
Stumbling out from the hollow hovel,
But "Ahoy!" hailed a fey owl,
"Prithee, canst thou maketh the bestowal,
Of thine lovely bone-filled bowl."
Yet, all mule harked were perfide words foul,
So, the mule quoths with crimson howl -

"Hark me, O pirate of pain!
Me dubbed 'Common Mane',
Lo! tane my bowl-filled bane.
Wherefore art thou here, arcane?
Where goest thou, O wing’ d thane?
Whither rests thine dance so vain?
Dare ye cast the die of gain?
Doth not spake those perfide words again!"


The owl so spake in glace of Yule sire-
"Hight me - Lord Carrion the Dire,
A’ am piper o' myriad's pyre.
And A’ hie to mine Crooked Spire.
As it waxes evermore higher,
Only whilst rats leapeth in Surtr's fire
Betwixt tempest and thunder with sans a moment’s rire,
Of ruby tiefed, and bones crumbling in endless mire."

"Why art rats leapeth to Surtr’s spume,"
Whilst thy feathers tuck’ d ‘way from fiery doom?
Stop the endless Nyx brume”
The mule quivered, voice a-boom,
The owl spun words in return from estival loom-
“A’ piped them of phantom Phe’ nix’s plume,
So not wane mine ivory room,
Or stop their ambrosial crimson flume.”

The Mule’s sigh, hath even hell's hosts huddle around-
"Ye, sir! I wouldst trample aground!
And put thou in gaol underground"
"Ah!", came owl's soft rebound,
"Thou too shalt kiss skies abound,
Anon drink rills of scarlet profound,
For Bloom’s soft buss hath ne' er Fall’s fated song bound.
On pragmatism, only idealism's shroud surrounds "
Interpretation of Characters and Symbols:
• Mule: Common man
• Owl: A corrupted leader or propagandist who sustains power through lies and manipulation.
• Rats: Soldiers.
• Crooked Spire: The corrupt seat of power.
• Surtr’s Fire: War
• Phoenix’s Plume: propaganda
Megan Sherman Feb 2017
Besides me there's a charming figure
Who makes my spirit feel brazen, bigger
I don't know from whence this soul came
But for its presence my own feels brewed, aflame
Paths that cross on Heart emboss
A truth that soars like albatross
My morbid mind is struck and sparked
By piercing way their spirit harked
Each word knells and impresses

But deep down I have sharp perceived
The rankest thing they have believed
Constructing of me a shallow image
No suasion to show them it's a mirage
The rumour's rife, it can't be helped
To be given that X I could have yelped
They regretfully think the tragedy is me
When it's that they wallow in falsity
And think they have me scalped
BTW Dec 2022
The Gardener
11 Dec 2022

“Who is speaking?” Ogre I know.
“Hateful words”, somewhere below.

I , devil unwise,
Spoke regretful thought,
Stat surprised.

“Lost dark-heathen”, show me your marque.

“Dawn cry-scent blackened”, Beelzebub harked.
“Experience forgetter, thorn ever-last,”
“Asthmatic throb, last-pain-filled gasp.”

“Lucifer, foul-blossom, demon-on-hold,
Craven brass, once claimed true gold.
Alchemist silver, tied at my bow,
Exorcist arrow-rain, will, your way flow.”

Let me lie peaceful, eternal my own.
Fiend away, leave my wooden door home.
Wolf heed us  laden, stay further encore.
Peonies, roses, quiet my core!
Forgotten the devil .
Megan Sherman Aug 2017
I heard a message - in my mind
The angels harked divine
To liberate my music
From the devils brine
My passion never over
My passion never dead
I am daydream believer
With coy riddles in my head
I heard a message - in my mind
But the messenger elude
But I saw them comfort and carress me
So I write them stunning interlude
Swords michete guns knives muskets tears
Sweat blood through wars ears adhere
Closely engaged from battle to battle rattle
Animosity tails let the hate of ship sails
As i tip the scales lift the veil still fishin' scales
Twist the cabbage makes more of a savage
Havoc harked prodigy marked since i was a kid
Mobbed deep into my minds awakened
From the sleep or slumbers running high numbers
serial murders replays visits of the decayed  
I slayed got the Genghis mask for the task
Then unmask the powers from the flask
Spirits movin' through the anemia filled arteries
Universe is apart of me i been ready to D-I-E
Not spiritually but physically they can't match epitome
Darkness before the light rudeness before delight
Despite what history and hardest critics write
They can't fight the hype spread the poltergeist
Retract the heist roll the dice spliced
All heads anoint like a spark from a joint points
Ya in another direction projections selections
Of past memory future past and presents
Two fish and five loaves aint enough to eat
Or feed a billion souls in dire needs soaked the seeds
still no harvest in October world is over
A four leafed clover couldn't bring life sober
See the guns runaway equals life going away
Waiting at the station til the clock strikes midnight
Dark man glow between the crossroads go
Only bold mixed with the wicked Chaos i pick it
Like a strokes of Hendrix guitar a black star
Candle shines the brightest when it's close to
Burning out the the wick up on my feet really quick
Mix the Bisquick egg and other ingredients
For the master recipe for eternal war remedies

— The End —