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.
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
76 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
89 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
104 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
120 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
13th Jan 2025 3:15pm
13th Jan 2025 3:15pm
Like an Echo
"She should be like a town clock — keep time and observe regularity. She should not, however, like a town clock, speak so loudly that all the town may hear her.
She should be like a snail — prudent, and keep within her own house.
She should not be like a snail — carry all she has upon her back.
She should be like an echo — speak when spoken to.
But she should not be like an echo — determined always to have the last word." - "Three Wifely Virtues", The Australian Woman's Mirror, 24/02/1925
A snail slimes across a leaf,
Its hearth and...
She should be like a snail — prudent, and keep within her own house.
She should not be like a snail — carry all she has upon her back.
She should be like an echo — speak when spoken to.
But she should not be like an echo — determined always to have the last word." - "Three Wifely Virtues", The Australian Woman's Mirror, 24/02/1925
A snail slimes across a leaf,
Its hearth and...
#abuse
#feminism
#historical #marriage
#historical #marriage
133 reads
2 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
12th Jan 2025 3:32pm
12th Jan 2025 3:32pm
A Deathly Balcony
A murder of crows, I saw on her breast!’
Our vicar said to us.
‘That room enough was on her chest
Proves that Satan gave her that bust!’
Our vicar said to us.
‘That room enough was on her chest
Proves that Satan gave her that bust!’
#funny
87 reads
3 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
11th Jan 2025 8:36pm
11th Jan 2025 8:36pm
Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
after Linda Pastan
You could psychologise, of course,
could tell them dad was mean to you,
that mummy took cocaine
and never made dinner on time.
Though maybe it’s gauche
to flaunt your childhood these days,
as if you’re just auditioning
to be the underdog
of some appalling talent show,
because in your heart you simply know
that you’re not good enough.
You think, perhaps, it’s merely this:
a strain of cynic in the blood,
a slanted sight, a faithlessness
that seeks its fellows out in art,
an ear...
You could psychologise, of course,
could tell them dad was mean to you,
that mummy took cocaine
and never made dinner on time.
Though maybe it’s gauche
to flaunt your childhood these days,
as if you’re just auditioning
to be the underdog
of some appalling talent show,
because in your heart you simply know
that you’re not good enough.
You think, perhaps, it’s merely this:
a strain of cynic in the blood,
a slanted sight, a faithlessness
that seeks its fellows out in art,
an ear...
#dark
#horror
#violence #WritingPoetry
#violence #WritingPoetry
110 reads
0 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
11th Jan 2025 6:57pm
11th Jan 2025 6:57pm
The Poison Bride
When the famous poetess passed out in her mashed potatoes on Christmas Eve, 1978, her husband rolled his eyes and her two children carried on glumly chewing. It was a semi-regular performance, the passing out act. George wondered how he'd ended up marrying the silly bitch.
Once on a literary tour, they'd been besieged by girls who seemed to regard him with envy for having such unfettered access to their mentally unstable idol. He'd happily switch places with any of them, or the middle-aged sad-sack men who worried at her ankles at luncheons. Two years ago, she'd had a brief...
Once on a literary tour, they'd been besieged by girls who seemed to regard him with envy for having such unfettered access to their mentally unstable idol. He'd happily switch places with any of them, or the middle-aged sad-sack men who worried at her ankles at luncheons. Two years ago, she'd had a brief...
#death
#marriage
#ShortStory #violence
#ShortStory #violence
88 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
10th Jan 2025 7:51pm
10th Jan 2025 7:51pm
Flowers for Confessors
after TS Eliot
Anne Sexton was obsessed with death,
That bellringer, this gravedigger.
In stylish dress, with gin-smoked breath,
Her corpse lolled in the gas-drenched car.
Cocktail sticks poke out her eyes,
The housewife’s life in grim surmise.
Measured out in olives, parts,
Domestic violence, artichoke hearts.
Plath, I guess, preceded her,
As death begets, like rabbits breed.
She sought a solace in the slur
Against fathers, the daughter’s need.
She knew the pain of too much sense,
The flowers...
Anne Sexton was obsessed with death,
That bellringer, this gravedigger.
In stylish dress, with gin-smoked breath,
Her corpse lolled in the gas-drenched car.
Cocktail sticks poke out her eyes,
The housewife’s life in grim surmise.
Measured out in olives, parts,
Domestic violence, artichoke hearts.
Plath, I guess, preceded her,
As death begets, like rabbits breed.
She sought a solace in the slur
Against fathers, the daughter’s need.
She knew the pain of too much sense,
The flowers...
#historical
#MentalHealth
#suicide #WritingPoetry
#suicide #WritingPoetry
136 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
6th Jan 2025 1:46pm
6th Jan 2025 1:46pm
The Bloodied Dandy
The hotel had been running since the Middle Ages and did a roaring trade in kitsch tours for people wanting to experience a little of the horror of murders that had happened there. Although the proprietors were innocent (tour guides employed by the hotel were at pains to emphasise) there was a conspiracy of highwaymen, as the 18th became the 19th century, to lure travellers and then kill and rob them in their rooms. One young Pink of the Ton (meaning a fashionable young man) was lured by the promise of elopement with a woman with whom he thought he had been in correspondence.
I was...
I was...
#ghosts
#historical
#horror #ShortStory
#horror #ShortStory
131 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
5th Jan 2025 11:05pm
5th Jan 2025 11:05pm
Eyes
When televisions first became household objects,
some people were scared to undress in front of them,
the convex and glaucomic eye staring,
pervert cyclops, invader in the living room.
These days of course the eyes are much smaller,
rectangular, and with us at all times, not just
when mother’s home with fish-and-chips to eat before
a black-and-white broadcast. Eyes follow us about.
When I was young and gay, and gay, the unrestricted
internet reached out with slimy hands and claimed
a lot of naive boys and girls, the eyes ...
some people were scared to undress in front of them,
the convex and glaucomic eye staring,
pervert cyclops, invader in the living room.
These days of course the eyes are much smaller,
rectangular, and with us at all times, not just
when mother’s home with fish-and-chips to eat before
a black-and-white broadcast. Eyes follow us about.
When I was young and gay, and gay, the unrestricted
internet reached out with slimy hands and claimed
a lot of naive boys and girls, the eyes ...
#abuse
#philosophical
#power #technology
#power #technology
122 reads
2 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
26th Dec 2024 2:27pm
26th Dec 2024 2:27pm
prison
drunk on words, you threw yourself
into the hourly burly of
the great prison where thoughts are chained
by words and made to glow for their captors
they galvanise the self
that abstract thing
and make it almost real
for fleeting addictive moments
into the hourly burly of
the great prison where thoughts are chained
by words and made to glow for their captors
they galvanise the self
that abstract thing
and make it almost real
for fleeting addictive moments
#art
#identity
#SelfReflection #WritingPoetry
#SelfReflection #WritingPoetry
120 reads
3 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
