Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
I write poetry on a range of subjects and in a range of styles. My privacy is extremely important to me, though I hope that you enjoy my work and that I enjoy yours.
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
17th Feb 2025 2:46am
17th Feb 2025 2:46am
American Churches
A pastor Jim Schulz resides there.
The one we pass along the road
whose lettered sign deplores
excuse for sin, and extols grace.
My bland and musty Anglia faith
askance observes this Pentecostal wrath,
the churches like warehouses of the soul,
the Wal-Mart for your Christ-shaped whole.
We see five churches on one block,
some pillared and tall, and some very small,
and one a single office stuck between
a van rental and nail bar, it seems.
Religion’s as common as commerce out here,
competing with...
The one we pass along the road
whose lettered sign deplores
excuse for sin, and extols grace.
My bland and musty Anglia faith
askance observes this Pentecostal wrath,
the churches like warehouses of the soul,
the Wal-Mart for your Christ-shaped whole.
We see five churches on one block,
some pillared and tall, and some very small,
and one a single office stuck between
a van rental and nail bar, it seems.
Religion’s as common as commerce out here,
competing with...
#America
#Christian
#religion #spiritual
#religion #spiritual
66 reads
4 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
6th Feb 2025 6:52pm
6th Feb 2025 6:52pm
Gentle Nell
This is an excerpt from a book I'm writing. Any feedback on things like the readability of prose and enjoyability will be greatly appreciated!
Nellie Gibson was known as "Gentle Nell" in the same manner of irony that allowed for enormous men to be called "tiny". She was, in truth, a nigh-on lunatic, though until recent months, collected enough to lead a band of criminals through several escapades. Her lieutenant was a man called Morris, who sometimes, on looking at her, wondered if she'd ever taken a man to her bed and pitied any that she had. She was not a...
Nellie Gibson was known as "Gentle Nell" in the same manner of irony that allowed for enormous men to be called "tiny". She was, in truth, a nigh-on lunatic, though until recent months, collected enough to lead a band of criminals through several escapades. Her lieutenant was a man called Morris, who sometimes, on looking at her, wondered if she'd ever taken a man to her bed and pitied any that she had. She was not a...
#fiction
#historical
#prose #violence
#prose #violence
88 reads
5 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
5th Feb 2025 3:09pm
5th Feb 2025 3:09pm
Latter-Day Witch
for Ann
As tall and white as gypsum lace hung high,
With eyes that kings would seek to tell
The outcomes of their wars when God
Became gnomic, a Galilean witch.
A country wife to manors born,
Yet also hermit, wise woman.
She lies in graves and pulls from ancient sod
The origins of death, and scouts the skies
For strange objects that linger in the arch.
She knows more lore than folks can tell,
She knows the meaning of each knell,
For whom it calls to heaven and to hell.
And lastly I can say she lives in Essex...
As tall and white as gypsum lace hung high,
With eyes that kings would seek to tell
The outcomes of their wars when God
Became gnomic, a Galilean witch.
A country wife to manors born,
Yet also hermit, wise woman.
She lies in graves and pulls from ancient sod
The origins of death, and scouts the skies
For strange objects that linger in the arch.
She knows more lore than folks can tell,
She knows the meaning of each knell,
For whom it calls to heaven and to hell.
And lastly I can say she lives in Essex...
#historical
#magic
#pagan #witches
#pagan #witches
45 reads
1 Comment
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
4th Feb 2025 12:45pm
4th Feb 2025 12:45pm
Baroness
after Paul S…
Baroness Orczy
(pronounced Or-tsey)
believed in the First World War
to a point where she aimed to enlist
a hundred thousand women to
encourage men to go enlist;
she also believed
in the innate superiority
of aristocracy
(I should have guessed that, I suppose,
based on The Scarlet Pimpernel).
We don’t always impose
our own beliefs
on those who lived
a hundred and more years ago,
for good reasons.
If Hitler was a rotten sort,
your typical German was...
Baroness Orczy
(pronounced Or-tsey)
believed in the First World War
to a point where she aimed to enlist
a hundred thousand women to
encourage men to go enlist;
she also believed
in the innate superiority
of aristocracy
(I should have guessed that, I suppose,
based on The Scarlet Pimpernel).
We don’t always impose
our own beliefs
on those who lived
a hundred and more years ago,
for good reasons.
If Hitler was a rotten sort,
your typical German was...
#books
#culture
#historical #morality
#historical #morality
48 reads
4 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
3rd Feb 2025 8:53pm
3rd Feb 2025 8:53pm
Miss Birdseed
The public house had long been haunted by some strange presence that upset slop trays and let beer dribble out from the taps when no one was looking, but it was not really about this that the publican's wife had come to consult the occult detective, Joshua Samuels.
'That's just the Pimlico poisoner, that is' said Mrs Godalming with weird alacrity. 'Back in my grandfather's day, the pub was frequented by bigwigs from Westminster on their way to County Hall, where Maggie Struthers was strung up by her neck in the place of execution for killing her husband and child with arsenic....
'That's just the Pimlico poisoner, that is' said Mrs Godalming with weird alacrity. 'Back in my grandfather's day, the pub was frequented by bigwigs from Westminster on their way to County Hall, where Maggie Struthers was strung up by her neck in the place of execution for killing her husband and child with arsenic....
#evil
#ghosts
#historical #horror
#historical #horror
40 reads
0 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
3rd Feb 2025 11:48am
3rd Feb 2025 11:48am
Coffee Haiku, a Cycle
Cup of coffee left.
On low wall outside office.
Collecting raindrops.
Two days pass, a third.
Coffee cup remains, sat there.
Is it now more rain?
A light winter frost.
It glazes leaves and walkways.
Coffee cup remains, sat there.
On low wall outside office.
Collecting raindrops.
Two days pass, a third.
Coffee cup remains, sat there.
Is it now more rain?
A light winter frost.
It glazes leaves and walkways.
Coffee cup remains, sat there.
#coffee
#haiku
#nature #winter
#nature #winter
53 reads
1 Comment
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
2nd Feb 2025 1:30am
2nd Feb 2025 1:30am
The Feminine Stain
When I was a kid
my dad said he could
tell always when
a book was penned
by female hand and mind,
in cases even where
a male pseudonym was used,
and so he’d have to put it down
and pick up something else instead,
a woman’s prose
being too flowery for him.
He was horrified when
I told him at 12
that my favourite author
was Agatha Christie,
but settled a little
when I was 15
and reading Patricia Highsmith,
because she was a lesbian
and therefore of masculine mind,
to his mind.
...
my dad said he could
tell always when
a book was penned
by female hand and mind,
in cases even where
a male pseudonym was used,
and so he’d have to put it down
and pick up something else instead,
a woman’s prose
being too flowery for him.
He was horrified when
I told him at 12
that my favourite author
was Agatha Christie,
but settled a little
when I was 15
and reading Patricia Highsmith,
because she was a lesbian
and therefore of masculine mind,
to his mind.
...
#art
#feminism
#hate #oppression
#hate #oppression
46 reads
1 Comment
DARK POEM
Published
1st Feb 2025 6:04pm
1st Feb 2025 6:04pm
A Faithless Eucharist
The only thing that gave me life
was art and literature,
though once I confused religion with such,
and so reclining with the damned,
I felt that I could follow Him.
But really it’s as empty as a faithless Eucharist,
and how I used art was only to form
a self that could like dough and flowers rise.
If not the Watchmaker at least
to some sense that you’re whole.
I think I’ll still be cynical and wretched at 50.
I’ve never cared for people, life,
except when evolution twists
genetic imperative’s knife.
was art and literature,
though once I confused religion with such,
and so reclining with the damned,
I felt that I could follow Him.
But really it’s as empty as a faithless Eucharist,
and how I used art was only to form
a self that could like dough and flowers rise.
If not the Watchmaker at least
to some sense that you’re whole.
I think I’ll still be cynical and wretched at 50.
I’ve never cared for people, life,
except when evolution twists
genetic imperative’s knife.
#apathy
#art
#atheism #spiritual
#atheism #spiritual
53 reads
0 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
29th Jan 2025 1:53am
29th Jan 2025 1:53am
Revenge of the Fembots
When I was a kid
I wanted to write
a sequel to Levin’s
The Stepford Wives wherein
the wives would gain
fresh sentience
and calibrate
their private parts
to pulverise
their husband’s bits
like so much sausage meat
blended to mush.
Quite how I would
have executed this
I do not know,
but genius in youth
is not at all
times practical.
I wanted to write
a sequel to Levin’s
The Stepford Wives wherein
the wives would gain
fresh sentience
and calibrate
their private parts
to pulverise
their husband’s bits
like so much sausage meat
blended to mush.
Quite how I would
have executed this
I do not know,
but genius in youth
is not at all
times practical.
#funny
51 reads
2 Comments
UPBEAT INSPIRATIONAL POEM
Published
24th Jan 2025 6:33pm
24th Jan 2025 6:33pm
Beat Me to a Pulp
"... a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste." - R Austin Freeman, "The Art of the Detective Story"
I try for taste, you understand,
and read sonnets,
collect novels that reap plaudits.
I accept manna from God's hand.
But often my taste reflects the dark mass
of office girls and workshop boys,
and so I fly like Lucifer, alas,
to folk fiction and pulpy joys.
Elysia's bookshelves...
I try for taste, you understand,
and read sonnets,
collect novels that reap plaudits.
I accept manna from God's hand.
But often my taste reflects the dark mass
of office girls and workshop boys,
and so I fly like Lucifer, alas,
to folk fiction and pulpy joys.
Elysia's bookshelves...
#art
#books
#PopCulture #reading
#PopCulture #reading
54 reads
3 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
17th Jan 2025 3:07pm
17th Jan 2025 3:07pm
Death of a Big Fish
for David Lynch
The strangeness inherent in you
was not disturbing, in the end,
not in a sense that prophesied flames, at least,
but opened up a strange vista,
one terrifying in Radcliffe’s vision
of what defines terror:
expanding your soul, not annihilating.
A woman in trouble. Wrapped in plastic.
Bipedal bunny rabbits in human clothes.
Dennis Hopper huffing gas.
Laura Dern with weird stretched-out smile.
Or LAX in brightest day.
The sentimental turned
to sinister. Black Lodge. Dwarf.
These painterly...
The strangeness inherent in you
was not disturbing, in the end,
not in a sense that prophesied flames, at least,
but opened up a strange vista,
one terrifying in Radcliffe’s vision
of what defines terror:
expanding your soul, not annihilating.
A woman in trouble. Wrapped in plastic.
Bipedal bunny rabbits in human clothes.
Dennis Hopper huffing gas.
Laura Dern with weird stretched-out smile.
Or LAX in brightest day.
The sentimental turned
to sinister. Black Lodge. Dwarf.
These painterly...
#admiration
#art
#LifeCycle #PopCulture
#LifeCycle #PopCulture
74 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
16th Jan 2025 6:31pm
16th Jan 2025 6:31pm
Love Rots
Love, my friends, is overrated.
Be compassionate, have empathy instead.
And not always regard yourself
as Tristan or Isolde,
the Lochinvar who came
to overturn the bridal feast.
Kindness,
when done with earnestness
and not as trickery,
is what disperses clouds
to give the withered crops fresh light.
Where love can be selfish, needful,
a passion rushing forth
as much to solder cracks
in one's own soul.
Love pressed the pillow down
on Desdemona's face,
or so Othello might have claimed.
Love...
Be compassionate, have empathy instead.
And not always regard yourself
as Tristan or Isolde,
the Lochinvar who came
to overturn the bridal feast.
Kindness,
when done with earnestness
and not as trickery,
is what disperses clouds
to give the withered crops fresh light.
Where love can be selfish, needful,
a passion rushing forth
as much to solder cracks
in one's own soul.
Love pressed the pillow down
on Desdemona's face,
or so Othello might have claimed.
Love...
#culture
#kindness
#love #mythology
#love #mythology
92 reads
3 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
