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.
SELF POEM
Published
3rd May 2025 11:30pm
3rd May 2025 11:30pm
ghost stories
in passing some old church
as afternoon reclines,
the sunlight carving out
an image in relief
of all the old buildings
as mellow sentries of the past,
I look through a wrought-iron gate and see
the lichen-wrapped tombstones,
then to my left, a Quaker meeting house
where once I’d gone to vote, and saw
the inner courtyard where
the faithful must still sit and contemplate.
I cannot bring myself to faith.
but scenes like those I’ve said,
the flickering music of dusk on ancient stone,
allows the mind to broach...
as afternoon reclines,
the sunlight carving out
an image in relief
of all the old buildings
as mellow sentries of the past,
I look through a wrought-iron gate and see
the lichen-wrapped tombstones,
then to my left, a Quaker meeting house
where once I’d gone to vote, and saw
the inner courtyard where
the faithful must still sit and contemplate.
I cannot bring myself to faith.
but scenes like those I’ve said,
the flickering music of dusk on ancient stone,
allows the mind to broach...
#ghosts
58 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
2nd May 2025 12:44pm
2nd May 2025 12:44pm
O tell me the truth about love
after Auden
O tell me the truth about love,
the sniggering innuendo,
the all-encompassing desire wrought
upon the aching flesh
and subsequently joked about
by those who've never had to love
or satisfy urges
in darkness and squalor.
O tell me the truth about love,
that seeks intoxicating drink,
replete with what can gratify
the heart until
its chambers bleed again.
The ironic and gay
shall dance across
the chambers of the bleeding heart.
O tell me the truth about love,
if it will come...
O tell me the truth about love,
the sniggering innuendo,
the all-encompassing desire wrought
upon the aching flesh
and subsequently joked about
by those who've never had to love
or satisfy urges
in darkness and squalor.
O tell me the truth about love,
that seeks intoxicating drink,
replete with what can gratify
the heart until
its chambers bleed again.
The ironic and gay
shall dance across
the chambers of the bleeding heart.
O tell me the truth about love,
if it will come...
#emotional
#hurt
#LGBT #love
#LGBT #love
73 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
29th Apr 2025 9:17pm
29th Apr 2025 9:17pm
the dying in us all
i realise too late
(for youth and childhood)
the hardest emotion to feel
the thing i always fought against
and that which kept out all
was love, forgiveness.
how i imagined killing you
so many times
of making you afraid
as you made me
when round your own son’s neck
you placed your hands
and held him fast across the bath
the tap running, running.
i thought of stabbing you to death
of breaking your skull with a chair
and feeling pleasure on
the consummation of that act
approaching sensuality. ...
(for youth and childhood)
the hardest emotion to feel
the thing i always fought against
and that which kept out all
was love, forgiveness.
how i imagined killing you
so many times
of making you afraid
as you made me
when round your own son’s neck
you placed your hands
and held him fast across the bath
the tap running, running.
i thought of stabbing you to death
of breaking your skull with a chair
and feeling pleasure on
the consummation of that act
approaching sensuality. ...
#abuse
#childhood
#forgiveness #love
#forgiveness #love
59 reads
1 Comment
LOVE POEM
Published
9th Mar 2025 9:11pm
9th Mar 2025 9:11pm
Nan’s Funeral
It was comforting to know
she spent her final days
in a place as lavish
and warm as this,
the care home off the motorway
and opposite a graveyard where
I went with her once to place flowers
across her second husband’s grave.
This lavish estate of houses and
a huge facility of rooms around
a central hexagon arranged,
alarms and nurses all about.
We went here on a hot March day,
like summer in truth, and filled
with a scent of cut grass, the warmth
a little much in our funeral clothes,
but oh so...
she spent her final days
in a place as lavish
and warm as this,
the care home off the motorway
and opposite a graveyard where
I went with her once to place flowers
across her second husband’s grave.
This lavish estate of houses and
a huge facility of rooms around
a central hexagon arranged,
alarms and nurses all about.
We went here on a hot March day,
like summer in truth, and filled
with a scent of cut grass, the warmth
a little much in our funeral clothes,
but oh so...
#death
#family
#funeral #love
#funeral #love
120 reads
2 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
9th Mar 2025 2:06pm
9th Mar 2025 2:06pm
Why is Art?
I sometimes think
that when you’re young
you think of art as
a provocation,
and when you’re old
you take it as
a comfort more
than anything,
and in between
it serves as both
depending on
each need and want.
that when you’re young
you think of art as
a provocation,
and when you’re old
you take it as
a comfort more
than anything,
and in between
it serves as both
depending on
each need and want.
#aging
#art
#MovingOn #SelfDiscovery
#MovingOn #SelfDiscovery
130 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
6th Mar 2025 2:59pm
6th Mar 2025 2:59pm
Found Scrawled Across an Instrument of Occultic Practice
This astrolabe has measured out
My days in damned astrology
The turning of its golden hands
Riposte to pure theology
My days in damned astrology
The turning of its golden hands
Riposte to pure theology
#historical
#magic
#pagan #spiritual
#pagan #spiritual
126 reads
3 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
27th Feb 2025 8:47am
27th Feb 2025 8:47am
fleeting romance
after Joe Bolton
we danced once back in ‘94
before the long waste of my life
you taking pity on me (I felt)
an abstruse friendless teenage boy
we waltzed across the Hounslow road
and out into the lights
and maybe you were trying to forget
what made those bruises on your arms
or trying to stall returning home
to parents you no longer loved
but in any case it is
my one warm thought of childhood
the two of us dancing
as fleeting as it was…
I don’t believe in afterlives
and lonely still...
we danced once back in ‘94
before the long waste of my life
you taking pity on me (I felt)
an abstruse friendless teenage boy
we waltzed across the Hounslow road
and out into the lights
and maybe you were trying to forget
what made those bruises on your arms
or trying to stall returning home
to parents you no longer loved
but in any case it is
my one warm thought of childhood
the two of us dancing
as fleeting as it was…
I don’t believe in afterlives
and lonely still...
#abuse
#despair
#love #memories
#love #memories
135 reads
8 Comments
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
176 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
143 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
98 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
94 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
80 reads
0 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
