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.
DARK POEM
Published
17th Oct 2024 12:54pm
17th Oct 2024 12:54pm
Victorian Sermon
The tranquil face of cruelty
behoves the devil as a mask.
Than that of domesticity,
there is no hate more intimate.
The girl who can't believe that love
need not be so conditional,
the boy who's long since lost
a need for love consensual...
These faces do not pulse
and burst with necrophilic pus.
They're often deeply false
with lines of youth, beauty.
You find the Devil in its voice,
in how it exercises choice.
behoves the devil as a mask.
Than that of domesticity,
there is no hate more intimate.
The girl who can't believe that love
need not be so conditional,
the boy who's long since lost
a need for love consensual...
These faces do not pulse
and burst with necrophilic pus.
They're often deeply false
with lines of youth, beauty.
You find the Devil in its voice,
in how it exercises choice.
#hate
#historical
#love #religion
#love #religion
89 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
16th Oct 2024 1:26am
16th Oct 2024 1:26am
The Spectral Window
I don’t believe in ghosts,
but once when I was just fifteen
I walked into an empty room
inside my mother’s flat,
a room that was large and empty
and filled with odds and ends,
an old round table here,
a clothes horse there…
and through the curtainless window
the moonlight shone and started me.
So it was nothing much at all,
but in that moment I did not
believe in ghosts and yet
was scared of them.
but once when I was just fifteen
I walked into an empty room
inside my mother’s flat,
a room that was large and empty
and filled with odds and ends,
an old round table here,
a clothes horse there…
and through the curtainless window
the moonlight shone and started me.
So it was nothing much at all,
but in that moment I did not
believe in ghosts and yet
was scared of them.
#childhood
#ghosts
#memories #mother
#memories #mother
92 reads
4 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
9th Oct 2024 12:10pm
9th Oct 2024 12:10pm
On the Path
The truth of the heart is that it all ends',
the voice of a sage came quietly.
Or was it your own thoughts, locked far within yourself,
the childish need to affect rebellion
against an unfair scheme of life where all that lives will die
without a resurrection soon to grace?
The barn is empty, lashed by wind, and swaddled in blackness.
You sit inside and I come looking for you there,
to sit beside you in the cold and talk astrology, science,
belief, and other silhouettes that dance on hay bales.
We are two stalks of straw...
the voice of a sage came quietly.
Or was it your own thoughts, locked far within yourself,
the childish need to affect rebellion
against an unfair scheme of life where all that lives will die
without a resurrection soon to grace?
The barn is empty, lashed by wind, and swaddled in blackness.
You sit inside and I come looking for you there,
to sit beside you in the cold and talk astrology, science,
belief, and other silhouettes that dance on hay bales.
We are two stalks of straw...
#death
#humankind
#LifeCycle #love
#LifeCycle #love
79 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
7th Oct 2024 4:28pm
7th Oct 2024 4:28pm
Brick and Mortar
Houses are of brick and mortar. If there's evil, it's in someone's heart. I don't remember who said that, but it mostly holds true. I say mostly because sometimes the evil in someone's heart can leach into the brick-and-mortar. The house on Cromwell Row was like that. It was one of five uniform constructions backing onto farmer's fields, the opposite of what you would imagine when given the prompt "haunted house". There were no gables, no accidents of architecture turning upper windows into eyes, and it was only one floor, a bungalow, just like its mates.
My husband and I...
My husband and I...
#fiction
#ghosts
#horror #ShortStory
#horror #ShortStory
68 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
5th Oct 2024 11:38pm
5th Oct 2024 11:38pm
B-Movies
when they were shot on film
they had a poetry to them
the truly insane ones with acting so wooden
it leaves splinters
and lines unspeakable to where
they stay that way still when spoken
were nonetheless great swathes of light
first caught on frail celluloid
there was, in short, blood behind the eyes
not just vision but flesh
a sense that something had been made
even if it was just Puppet Master 5
now anyone can soak
a streaming site in digital schlock
and life and flesh and blood’s gone out of it
they had a poetry to them
the truly insane ones with acting so wooden
it leaves splinters
and lines unspeakable to where
they stay that way still when spoken
were nonetheless great swathes of light
first caught on frail celluloid
there was, in short, blood behind the eyes
not just vision but flesh
a sense that something had been made
even if it was just Puppet Master 5
now anyone can soak
a streaming site in digital schlock
and life and flesh and blood’s gone out of it
#art
#historical
#PopCulture #technology
#PopCulture #technology
67 reads
1 Comment
DARK POEM
Published
5th Oct 2024 4:44pm
5th Oct 2024 4:44pm
dancer in hell
the dancer held in aspic is released
and muscle memory occurs
to get her through a pirouette
surrounded by the loving damned
before the spotlight disappears
and with it all of Galilee
defined as a roadside bar
and then a blinding light so white
so void of dance and audience
and just a floating vanity
the glass in which she sees herself
crippled by thousands of crows’ feet
and muscle memory occurs
to get her through a pirouette
surrounded by the loving damned
before the spotlight disappears
and with it all of Galilee
defined as a roadside bar
and then a blinding light so white
so void of dance and audience
and just a floating vanity
the glass in which she sees herself
crippled by thousands of crows’ feet
#aging
#dance
#death #hell
#death #hell
144 reads
2 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
4th Oct 2024 11:26pm
4th Oct 2024 11:26pm
Horror Poet
one of my firsts was Sylvia Plath
just like sad college girls
the world over
but I knew what people meant
when they said
that her work was obsessed with death
preening, diseased, and cruel
and all I could say
was that I liked it that way
and liked that she went to places
uncouth for women poets of that time…
that if the masculine could be
masturbatory, grim, and raving at the swell
of past
so could the feminine…
and that she took the nursery rhyme
and moulded it to fit
the...
just like sad college girls
the world over
but I knew what people meant
when they said
that her work was obsessed with death
preening, diseased, and cruel
and all I could say
was that I liked it that way
and liked that she went to places
uncouth for women poets of that time…
that if the masculine could be
masturbatory, grim, and raving at the swell
of past
so could the feminine…
and that she took the nursery rhyme
and moulded it to fit
the...
#feminism
#historical
#MentalHealth #WritingPoetry
#MentalHealth #WritingPoetry
89 reads
3 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
4th Oct 2024 10:22pm
4th Oct 2024 10:22pm
Nightmare Fabricator
I have always been afraid.
From lying on my bed at seventeen
and thinking what if I
could kill my own brother,
to wondering how serious
my father was when he said that he could
kill me and get away with it.
I came to horror thus, to existential dread,
the rotting carcass of the head
the grim bordello of the heart.
And if there’s grace at all
it’s passing these things off as art.
From lying on my bed at seventeen
and thinking what if I
could kill my own brother,
to wondering how serious
my father was when he said that he could
kill me and get away with it.
I came to horror thus, to existential dread,
the rotting carcass of the head
the grim bordello of the heart.
And if there’s grace at all
it’s passing these things off as art.
#fear
#horror
#identity #violence
#identity #violence
72 reads
3 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
4th Oct 2024 12:43pm
4th Oct 2024 12:43pm
you can’t go home
a trope outside of time
with featureless white rooms
in place of where you thought you’d be
or streets at night with yellow glass
implying someone else’s warmth
you hear your name among the trees
and telephone wires
yet hardly know where home now is
and scream and scream and scream
with featureless white rooms
in place of where you thought you’d be
or streets at night with yellow glass
implying someone else’s warmth
you hear your name among the trees
and telephone wires
yet hardly know where home now is
and scream and scream and scream
#dreams
#home
#identity #memories
#identity #memories
61 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
30th Sep 2024 4:52pm
30th Sep 2024 4:52pm
Scapino
The new flats built on Eagle Street were semi-luxurious and advertised as being for "young professionals". Previously it had been a council property and used to house needy families as well as other "problem cases" that the local authorities felt obliged to deal with, including addicts and recently released prisoners. There was a scandal two years before the council sold the premises when the tenants of one flat murdered a young man whom they'd brought home from a nightclub. One of the killers was a collector of clown memorabilia and seemed especially fond of a persona...
#evil
#ghosts
#horror #scary
#horror #scary
114 reads
3 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
27th Sep 2024 11:31am
27th Sep 2024 11:31am
Lines Handwritten Inside a New English Bible
The skyline of the new Jerusalem
stands out against a cloth of black.
To me, an English church
is always clean and crisp like March mornings,
a spray of orange sunflowers,
a stained image of lambs.
The image-bearers walk in robes of sun
and might include me too, if I
could make the leap to faith.
The Bible structures rise within my head,
the flat-roofed cities of the plain
atop which women bathe.
stands out against a cloth of black.
To me, an English church
is always clean and crisp like March mornings,
a spray of orange sunflowers,
a stained image of lambs.
The image-bearers walk in robes of sun
and might include me too, if I
could make the leap to faith.
The Bible structures rise within my head,
the flat-roofed cities of the plain
atop which women bathe.
#Britain
#Christian
#religion #spiritual
#religion #spiritual
107 reads
3 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
26th Sep 2024 6:32pm
26th Sep 2024 6:32pm
Photographs, a collaborative diptych
These two poems represent a collaboration with a sleeping DU member, who spends his spare time writing on the sole of his slipper with a biro. The first poem is mine, the second is his.
Human Remains
We returned to the house
a time after
and mowed the lawn
and painted where
the paint had started to peel.
And somewhere in the process
we found photographs of how they looked
when they were young
and their home hadn't yet become
a mausoleum.
She wore pink crinoline on special occasions
and he wore moccasins. ...
Human Remains
We returned to the house
a time after
and mowed the lawn
and painted where
the paint had started to peel.
And somewhere in the process
we found photographs of how they looked
when they were young
and their home hadn't yet become
a mausoleum.
She wore pink crinoline on special occasions
and he wore moccasins. ...
#humankind
#LifeCycle
#loneliness #memories
#loneliness #memories
94 reads
2 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
