Category: Poetry

We, the victors

These hands,
Bent and broken,
Brutal tools of battle,
Rippling with rivulets of red,
Now claws.

No more,
The friends we lost,
It took them like the scythe
Our sisters, brothers, all to dust,
All dead.

We won,
Banners held high,
Yet still the blood was wet
As goblets were raised in triumph.
We won?

Tides turn.
It happened then,
The waters got too deep,
And we were stranded on a rock,
Too late.

Our fault.
We chose to fight.
No compromise was sought,
It takes two fools to stand on pride.
War came.

These hands,
The friends we lost,
Yet still the blood was wet
And we were stranded on a rock.
War came.

 

This piece was written for Nika Harper’s Wordplay #15. The challenge was a cinquain, with the prompts “weak hands” and “won the battle but started a war.”

Experiment One-point-oh

Said the Shaman, sharing solace,
“Leave the darker arts alone:
Time to mourn and time to conjure
Mix the two and you’ll be done.”

Said the acolyte, indignant,
Seething with the pain of loss:
“Ancient one, go stick your wisdom,
I, who mourn, don’t give a toss.

“I will wake the bleak enchantments,
Snare the wards that seal the dead!
I will raise her from her slumber –
Be the payment on my head.

“Sleeping ones, I call upon you,
Hear your mortal servant weep!
Yours the power, yours the glory
Yours to sow, and yours to reap –

“All I ask is one small favour,
In the matter of a girl,
Five-foot-five of soft perfection,
Though but one, she was my world.

“If your mercy would restore her –
Living, as she was before –
I would be your loyal vessel,
Though my powers maybe poor.

“K-thanks-bye,” the boy continued,
And the room to silence came.
The Shaman sighed “You’ve done it now.
Summoning is not a game.

“Foolish child, I tried to warn you,”
Spake he then, and turned away,
“Elder creatures make no bargains,
You are lost as well, this day.”

Soon the darkness overtook him,
Tendrils bearing him beneath,
Still she waits, his girl in heaven,
While he burns, without relief.

 

This piece was written for 13 Days 13 Shorts – a countdown to Halloween, using the theme of “Necromancer.” Check out the awesome submissions and join in the spooky fun!

Torea

My eyes can barely follow her motion, swooping down to pluck a stubborn shellfish from its once safe rocky perch. Only a blur, like some half-recognised shape in the darkness of our bedroom: shades drawn, no hint of starlight permitted inside. I stumble around the bed, trying not to wake you, trying not to let that waiting wooden bedpost leap longingly for my littlest toe, to conjure cunts and fucks and oh my Gods, and wake you, after all.

Yet still she falls, my imagination filling in the frames, a frazzled inbetweener – not even making minimum wage – so I can pretend to watch, and marvel at this graceful being, that I can’t even really see.

Touching

We can never truly touch. I know this, as I know the offset rotation of the earth, her drunken lurch through space and time.

Our skin can seem to touch, there’s that, and at one level, that’s enough. The intimate brush of flesh on flesh, friction that we counteract with passion’s warm wetness.

But our atoms remain,
apart.

Electrons may drift in common clouds,
may interact and influence,
But nuclei remain, mine and yours,
literal poles apart; forbidden by universal laws
from ever coexisting, or even
the faintest brush of contact.

We hover, then, enmeshed in human terms, but separated literally, alone in our skin.

Yet, even in this bleak realisation, a twist – we can’t touch ourselves either.

My finger-tips come infinitely close together, yet still a universe of space remains; for what is space if not insurmountable, eternal?

An emptiness between my fingers, an emptiness between our lips, an emptiness from here to there: if touch is but a lie of repulsion, it still compels, and I’ll be gladly, blissfully lied to, so long as I lie with you.

The Hunt

And what’s this, then, you canny man –
To leave just one dead boot behind?
And with it, neither leg nor plan,
Still truth will out, we always find!

Release the hounds again, my boys,
And girls – we are are a modern team –
They won’t be bothered by his ploys,
We’ll have his head, but first he’ll scream!

What’s this, the trail falters here?
Well hurry back, retrace our steps!
Another boot? Another scare?
Recall the dogs, we’ll have him yet!

I smell him now, that crooked thief,
At least the boots he left for us,
Come out, you cur, from underneath,
The coward shadows that you clutch!

Your feet must be on fire now,
And all for what, that noble whore?
Some whispered wit, some vacant vow,
A torrid tumble on the floor?

We’ll have you yet, adulterous swine,
And on your bloody bones I’ll gnaw!

 

This piece was written for Nika Harper’s Wordplay #6. The challenge was iambic verse, with the prompts “a leather boot laying by a field” and “a choice.”