Tag Archives: poetry

poem

Dream Lover

nightmarelover

Sleep is such a risky thing
knowing what the night may bring.
What visitations may come
before the rising of the sun.

What creature’s lidless eyes may peer
from ravaged face that once was dear.
What fetid draft may mist your cheek
redolent with graveyard reek.

Whose scrabbling fingers, jointed bone,
struggle for purchase on your own.
The twilight grin and tender touch
once adored, now missed so much.

But not the one from your mind’s eye
this fragment left when he did die,
beckoning with fleshless arms,
hungry for your mortal charms.

Leaching color from your skin,
a lipless kiss, a rictus grin.
Soundless whispers in your mind
trap you in this fevered time.

In sleep is when he comes to hold
a body free of coffin-mold,
when lust survives the fleshly state,
when bones and dust still wish to mate.

Standard
poem

Nymph

Image

A water nymph with ice-white eyes
Watches nearby as the sailor dies.
No pity within her liquid heart
For a creature who doesn’t know the art
Of ocean travel through wind and storm,
Since leagues from land, such is the norm.

Her pearly skin glows and shines;
Lighting his way as he sinks in the brine.
A gift from the nymph to a silly mortal;
A vision of wonder as he enters the portal
Where his breath will stop and his mind will fill
With sea-borne phantoms as his heart falls still.

The nymph smiles as he slips beneath the foam,
Knowing his spirit now enters her home.
Tonight as storms darken the sky,
The sailor will learn that he did not die.
His bones and hair and soul will change
Into something enduring, rich and strange.

The water nymph’s salty kisses will stir
A transformation, if he wishes, into one like her;
A creature of river and sea and stream
Of ice and chill and rain and steam.
Hand in hand the nymph and her mate will go
Wherever currents pull and waters flow.

Standard
writing

The Doggerel Dump

Once upon a time, poetry was, first and foremost, an exercise in rhyming.

No more.

In fact, most literati besmirch the humble rhyme, calling it a ‘hard sell’ if you want to submit such a gasping, grasping creature for publication. And yet, it is still the form of poetry with which most children forge their first connection to the art. So maybe because of that early exposure, the simple rhyme still catches my attention and dictates my own words.

I enjoy the rhythm. The beat. The way it catches the heart and propels the reader forward.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the other kind as well. But the small poetry-beast in me that was first enticed forward to sample this marvelous dance of words and ideas and musicality in the form of nursery tales, still pricks its ears forward in the presence of rhyme.

And sometimes…the little beast doesn’t just sample; it stays to consume the entire meal.

Image

Standard
poem

Shadow People

shadow people

Shadow people live
In the corners of his mind.
Incessant conversations
Of the most unholy kind.

He tries not to listen,
But the voices are so loud,
Drowning out his reason,
He is swallowed by their crowd.

Tiny little demons,
Or angels – he’s not sure –
Demanding his surrender,
Insisting there’s no cure.

He’s tired of the battle;
There’s no one on his side.
Doctors, drugs and clinics
Leave him nowhere else to hide.

So he’s thinking maybe this time
He’ll listen to their voices;
Shadow people in the corners
Defining all his choices.

Standard
poem

Urbana

 

Image

When streetlights dim and pavement steams,
When passions peak and neon screams,
The urban fairy takes a chance
And breaks into her glamour dance.

As smokestacks turn the sky to red
And children are all sent to bed,
She leaves her lair and paints her skin,
Damp with fragrance sweet as sin.

Her laugh like chimes drifts on the night
Sometimes heard…almost…not quite.
It stirs the trash lying in the gutter.
Makes mortal hearts speed and flutter.

Her flight has sound that whines and shreds
And enters the dreams of those in bed.
A sleeping metropolis unaware
Of enchantment spun in polluted air.

Given the chance, she wouldn’t change
These concrete canyons with their magic strange.
She lifts her wings at a squad car’s lights,
She loves the wild city nights.

Standard
poem

Cursed

On All Hallows Eve the veil grew thin.
The moon was bright, the starlight dim.
She laid her cards upon the table
And read the times as she was able.
With crystal orb and deck of Tarot,
With talent deep within her marrow,
She watched the year to come unwind,
Birthing images in her mind
Of horrors, joys and blood yet unshed,
Of a handsome lover new to her bed,
Of death for both beloved and strange,
But one painful thing would never change:
The visions seen with her witch’s art
Would remain locked within her heart.
Her curse, her gift, her ancient sorrow,
To leave others blind to their tomorrow.

Standard