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.
Is she a slut?
#sex
#erotic
#funny #feminism
#funny #feminism
319 reads
4 Comments
A Queer Icon
To the lucky person who has never heard [Truman Capote’s voice], I can only say: imagine what a brussels sprout would sound like, if a brussels sprout could talk.“ - Gore Vidal
For me, it’ll always be Truman Capote,
the little dynamo, who walked into the KBI
dressed up like Tiffany’s breakfast,
a coat as thickly trimmed in fur
as any just-out socialite’s. The world
of Kansas investigation must have reeled
as if at Satan’s own strutting peacock.
Perhaps another man has been as much himself.
I haven’t read much Gore Vidal. The pillars...
For me, it’ll always be Truman Capote,
the little dynamo, who walked into the KBI
dressed up like Tiffany’s breakfast,
a coat as thickly trimmed in fur
as any just-out socialite’s. The world
of Kansas investigation must have reeled
as if at Satan’s own strutting peacock.
Perhaps another man has been as much himself.
I haven’t read much Gore Vidal. The pillars...
#courage
#gay
#LGBT #books
#LGBT #books
306 reads
4 Comments
Songs of Scorsese
(a piece of film criticism as poetry)
referring to Goodfellas
The songs of a Scorsese film are just
as much the art as all that’s else.
He is the poet laureate of cinema,
a turning of the phrase in each little song
that he selects. Director of blank verse.
Who else could make a gangster film
and fill it with such love that even violence
becomes a shining lighthouse in the dark?
“And Then He Kissed Me” plays as Ray Liotta walks
with Mrs Hill through backdoors into luxury.
“Atlantis” plays as he’s forced to...
referring to Goodfellas
The songs of a Scorsese film are just
as much the art as all that’s else.
He is the poet laureate of cinema,
a turning of the phrase in each little song
that he selects. Director of blank verse.
Who else could make a gangster film
and fill it with such love that even violence
becomes a shining lighthouse in the dark?
“And Then He Kissed Me” plays as Ray Liotta walks
with Mrs Hill through backdoors into luxury.
“Atlantis” plays as he’s forced to...
#music
#lyrics
#PopCulture #culture
#PopCulture #culture
312 reads
1 Comment
A poem is...
Poetry relies upon trope." - Harold Bloom
a loose rondelet
A poem is.
A zoetrope. A drum is what
a poem is.
A poem is a spinning drum,
a frame about a central bulb.
Illusions of movements of dreams.
A poem is.
a loose rondelet
A poem is.
A zoetrope. A drum is what
a poem is.
A poem is a spinning drum,
a frame about a central bulb.
Illusions of movements of dreams.
A poem is.
#dreams
#WritingPoetry
#magic #metaphor
#magic #metaphor
305 reads
1 Comment
The Information Age
(on the internet)
You can lead a man to information,
but you can't make him think.
You can lead a man to information,
but you can't make him think.
#technology
#science
#school
#consumerism
#scifi
314 reads
8 Comments
On Poets
We emerge, I suppose, in the dark.
Poets, of all artists, are not cut out
for celebrance. We do not walk
the red carpets, or have the x factor.
Rebellious girls, un-shapen boys.
Railway men with Old World views,
hysterical daughters of middle-class homes.
The mad, the bad, the poor, insane.
We bud like fungi up from Hell,
to stake a claim in God’s clearing.
Poets, of all artists, are not cut out
for celebrance. We do not walk
the red carpets, or have the x factor.
Rebellious girls, un-shapen boys.
Railway men with Old World views,
hysterical daughters of middle-class homes.
The mad, the bad, the poor, insane.
We bud like fungi up from Hell,
to stake a claim in God’s clearing.
#WritersBlock
#LifeAsAWriter
#WritingPoetry #culture
#WritingPoetry #culture
283 reads
5 Comments
The Reason Why
It's only by the purest chance
that I survived, I sometimes think.
How else to tell the reason why
what made my mother ash,
(my step-mother literally),
has just about failed with me?
I've clung to life, I see,
at last. When it seemed like
I was just lazy, ungrateful,
and filthy of the deepest and
most private parts, I clung.
The books were my liferaft.
My rubber ring. The buoy
that saved the drowning boy.
that I survived, I sometimes think.
How else to tell the reason why
what made my mother ash,
(my step-mother literally),
has just about failed with me?
I've clung to life, I see,
at last. When it seemed like
I was just lazy, ungrateful,
and filthy of the deepest and
most private parts, I clung.
The books were my liferaft.
My rubber ring. The buoy
that saved the drowning boy.
#childhood
#abuse
#memories #MentalHealth
#memories #MentalHealth
308 reads
3 Comments
A Belated Coming Out, in Parts
I
I am filling in, slowly,
the grave of what
my father tried to make.
The half-aborted thing
that only nearing thirty-one
do I now see for what it is.
II
A grave mistake.
A cruel and clarion call
to hate the womanly, and gay.
To bury oneself in dead machismo.
And so it is with excellent pity
that I cry out your failure.
The lunatic death-song.
The burying, and coming out.
I am filling in, slowly,
the grave of what
my father tried to make.
The half-aborted thing
that only nearing thirty-one
do I now see for what it is.
II
A grave mistake.
A cruel and clarion call
to hate the womanly, and gay.
To bury oneself in dead machismo.
And so it is with excellent pity
that I cry out your failure.
The lunatic death-song.
The burying, and coming out.
#father
#gay
#childhood #LGBT
#childhood #LGBT
329 reads
6 Comments
The Angels and What They Teach Us
Los Angeles is a beautifully wrapped lie.” - Tangerine
When I was a lad I wanted more than anything
to be American. Didn't have
the happiest of childhoods, and so I looked
to movies for escape, the junk
of cinema and its marketing clouded
my adolescent mind.
The "trailer voice" emerged. I saw myself
tightrope walking along the road's curbed edge:
the unsubtle, manipulative, pseudo-classical music
backing the empty symbol of my childish movement:
"he was just a boy... until he found himself again."
(A tinkling chord. MR...
When I was a lad I wanted more than anything
to be American. Didn't have
the happiest of childhoods, and so I looked
to movies for escape, the junk
of cinema and its marketing clouded
my adolescent mind.
The "trailer voice" emerged. I saw myself
tightrope walking along the road's curbed edge:
the unsubtle, manipulative, pseudo-classical music
backing the empty symbol of my childish movement:
"he was just a boy... until he found himself again."
(A tinkling chord. MR...
#childhood
#lies
#America #PopCulture
#America #PopCulture
396 reads
0 Comments
Woman, Read Your Books
[Conduct books] represented a specific configuration of sexual features as those of the only appropriate woman for men at all levels of society to want as a wife." - Nancy Armstrong
The parlour image of a woman so reclined -
her legs outstretched beneath her black bustle,
a mockery of strenuous movement,
as if to say "she doesn't move, really,
but let's pretend she might" -
has haunted period pieces.
The great bin bag of history
is almost bursting with such books,
which represent figures of girls and young women.
Who act always...
The parlour image of a woman so reclined -
her legs outstretched beneath her black bustle,
a mockery of strenuous movement,
as if to say "she doesn't move, really,
but let's pretend she might" -
has haunted period pieces.
The great bin bag of history
is almost bursting with such books,
which represent figures of girls and young women.
Who act always...
#LGBT
#books
#art #feminism
#art #feminism
304 reads
0 Comments
My Culture Fix - 06/07/22
The book I'm reading
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers, a debut by a Victorian literature PhD about a New York restaurant critic and "female psychopath", a psychological phenomenon which she discusses in the first-person narrative, stylised as a sort of prison diary. She's a cannibalistic serial killer, in her early 50s. The book, therefore, is comparable to both American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Hannibal by Thomas Harris, though in my opinion more interesting/funnier than the former and less pulpy than the latter.
The book I wish I had written
Breakfast at...
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers, a debut by a Victorian literature PhD about a New York restaurant critic and "female psychopath", a psychological phenomenon which she discusses in the first-person narrative, stylised as a sort of prison diary. She's a cannibalistic serial killer, in her early 50s. The book, therefore, is comparable to both American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Hannibal by Thomas Harris, though in my opinion more interesting/funnier than the former and less pulpy than the latter.
The book I wish I had written
Breakfast at...
#books
#PopCulture
#culture #nonfiction
#culture #nonfiction
213 reads
3 Comments
My Grandmother’s Bureau
Old people’s homes, in my experience,
always seem to have a large bureau.
A cabinet on four legs
like a possessed piece of furniture
in a Disney cartoon, perhaps which once
had been an old French butler, called Renee.
My grandmother’s featured rows of ornaments,
little china houses and Dutch children drawing
their water from wells. There was also a section
for alcoholic drinks, a cabinet whose door
could hang from chains like a drawbridge and
so serve as a bartender’s mixing station.
Such items must have seemed so chic in...
always seem to have a large bureau.
A cabinet on four legs
like a possessed piece of furniture
in a Disney cartoon, perhaps which once
had been an old French butler, called Renee.
My grandmother’s featured rows of ornaments,
little china houses and Dutch children drawing
their water from wells. There was also a section
for alcoholic drinks, a cabinet whose door
could hang from chains like a drawbridge and
so serve as a bartender’s mixing station.
Such items must have seemed so chic in...
#family
#home
#feminism #historical
#feminism #historical
161 reads
0 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)