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Dark Poetry Two
- Thread starter Mariner5656
- Start date
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Who Replied?Mariner5656
Mannikin
Alternative version
Purity
The dead are painless and abide in pure spirit
They float, crucified, on Golgotha's matchsticks:
in cubby whispers and patient drops
of punctured IV bags. their hearts slowly
beating war hymns, faces suspend
as orphaned moons nailed to oars, hung
with Goldilocks braids, the thirsty soil
beneath slaked by each man's sorrow.
Moonflowers blow in vacant sentries.
The reeds bend dimly in their gaslight
and blow the wind song of consumption.
Crucibles hold them steadfast on the River Styx,
Catherine's wheel an ascetic sun satiated
with her salutary salutes, the men's pores
oozing her menstrual tears in bottled
anodynes of salvific suffering, to echo
the widowed nursery rhymes,
of old toys in cancer wards
glazed with dust
sealed screamlessly,
frozen by time
in coiled twilight.......
the stripped melody of burning ogatwas.
I went back to Mass in the winter.
The monstrance was raised, pale
with moon, finding me in the back.
I whispered that Lazarus would die,
twice holy, filled with star light, his body
stuffed with plague wheat and the weight
of joined arms in nodding mezzos.
The dead's eyes are gentle and loose,
starry gazing from the bottom of blood
orchards, the growling hounds in perpetual
pause. Their bottled tears are a solvent
for sudden clowns, for a trickster god's
embrace.. the rain bled sloth of carnival dirges.
Spectral Realms No. 21
John Thomas Allen
Purity
The dead are painless and abide in pure spirit
They float, crucified, on Golgotha's matchsticks:
in cubby whispers and patient drops
of punctured IV bags. their hearts slowly
beating war hymns, faces suspend
as orphaned moons nailed to oars, hung
with Goldilocks braids, the thirsty soil
beneath slaked by each man's sorrow.
Moonflowers blow in vacant sentries.
The reeds bend dimly in their gaslight
and blow the wind song of consumption.
Crucibles hold them steadfast on the River Styx,
Catherine's wheel an ascetic sun satiated
with her salutary salutes, the men's pores
oozing her menstrual tears in bottled
anodynes of salvific suffering, to echo
the widowed nursery rhymes,
of old toys in cancer wards
glazed with dust
sealed screamlessly,
frozen by time
in coiled twilight.......
the stripped melody of burning ogatwas.
I went back to Mass in the winter.
The monstrance was raised, pale
with moon, finding me in the back.
I whispered that Lazarus would die,
twice holy, filled with star light, his body
stuffed with plague wheat and the weight
of joined arms in nodding mezzos.
The dead's eyes are gentle and loose,
starry gazing from the bottom of blood
orchards, the growling hounds in perpetual
pause. Their bottled tears are a solvent
for sudden clowns, for a trickster god's
embrace.. the rain bled sloth of carnival dirges.
Spectral Realms No. 21
John Thomas Allen
Mariner5656
Mannikin
In cold October rain I go again
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.
The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.
No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.
Joseph Payne Brennan
In cold October rain I go again
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.
The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.
No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.
Joseph Payne Brennan
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.
The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.
No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.
Joseph Payne Brennan
In cold October rain I go again
down grey neglected streets my father knew,
past blackened walls and rows of silent houses
where years have watched their sullen scars accrue.
The chilling autumn rain sweeps steadily
as if it fell forever out of Time.
I walk unseen till I become a wraith,
a witless marionette, in some dim pantomime.
No one stands at the vanished door I seek,
no one waits in the light to lead me home again.
The silent houses mock me with their ruin
as if they mocked ghosts as well as men.
Joseph Payne Brennan