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.
Regular Tuesday
watching a stupid French slasher film,
about a serial killer who in an opening scene
dumps a head from his truck’s driver side,
and in the end we’re supposed to believe
that all along he was the lesbian student,
staying in the farmhouse with the friend
whose family are all butchered,
and whom she watches showering.
why do I watch this trash, I think,
shovelling Genoa cake into my maw,
I should be reading Dante by the moon.
outside the streetlights fill the rain
and leave little patterns behind, between stones;
fine...
about a serial killer who in an opening scene
dumps a head from his truck’s driver side,
and in the end we’re supposed to believe
that all along he was the lesbian student,
staying in the farmhouse with the friend
whose family are all butchered,
and whom she watches showering.
why do I watch this trash, I think,
shovelling Genoa cake into my maw,
I should be reading Dante by the moon.
outside the streetlights fill the rain
and leave little patterns behind, between stones;
fine...
#boredom
65 reads
1 Comment
How Do You Write About Nazis?
By having them prepare breakfast,
or mow the lawn and chide young Franz
for picking bluebells from his mother’s boxes.
We all are ignorant of other people’s pain,
sometimes. The Russian grandmother
who gorges on strawberries now they’re cheap,
rifled from the place where bodies pile up
and children in parkas weep for dead parents.
The Israelite who praises current policy
as in the background warheads burr
on track to shatter someone’s lifelong home.
Evil was never a suit of clothes, a totem or
The Past. It was...
or mow the lawn and chide young Franz
for picking bluebells from his mother’s boxes.
We all are ignorant of other people’s pain,
sometimes. The Russian grandmother
who gorges on strawberries now they’re cheap,
rifled from the place where bodies pile up
and children in parkas weep for dead parents.
The Israelite who praises current policy
as in the background warheads burr
on track to shatter someone’s lifelong home.
Evil was never a suit of clothes, a totem or
The Past. It was...
#evil
78 reads
4 Comments
The Glamorous Couple Next Door
flash fiction
They were in a hotel not far from the Spanish Steps. The place was filled with American tourists, including a Mr and Mrs Franks who had sat with them at dinner and asked them to explain various British idioms in their coarse, braying voices. ‘I don’t know how you stand them’ said Jane.
‘Me?’ said Barnaby, rootling through a suitcase on a chair with a broken crossbar. ‘You’re the one who caused them to glom onto us at bridge last night.’
‘I only said that she looked just like me in that hat when I was here last year.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Bah!...
They were in a hotel not far from the Spanish Steps. The place was filled with American tourists, including a Mr and Mrs Franks who had sat with them at dinner and asked them to explain various British idioms in their coarse, braying voices. ‘I don’t know how you stand them’ said Jane.
‘Me?’ said Barnaby, rootling through a suitcase on a chair with a broken crossbar. ‘You’re the one who caused them to glom onto us at bridge last night.’
‘I only said that she looked just like me in that hat when I was here last year.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Bah!...
#sex
#fiction
#ShortStory #horror
#ShortStory #horror
75 reads
2 Comments
Sometimes, You Never Truly Know…
The man you used to know
was never really there,
though sure you may be
that at one time you saw
the Sun run a hand
through his curly brown hair.
Now sepia and strained,
like made-up World War I letters
you soaked in tea to make seem old,
the man you loved’s a chimera…
you know that what he did
disproves all that you thought he was.
The photographs are diamonds of love,
the newspapers the proof they’re only glass.
was never really there,
though sure you may be
that at one time you saw
the Sun run a hand
through his curly brown hair.
Now sepia and strained,
like made-up World War I letters
you soaked in tea to make seem old,
the man you loved’s a chimera…
you know that what he did
disproves all that you thought he was.
The photographs are diamonds of love,
the newspapers the proof they’re only glass.
#love
#grief
#family #evil
#family #evil
99 reads
1 Comment
When once I beheld
Adulthood could be defined as the process of learning to be shocked by things that do not shock teenagers.” - Roger Ebert
When once I beheld a cynical pose
the font of adult life,
a carapace of irony
protecting me
from all that slit my heart,
I’d never quite maintain the grip
required to see
the world as comedy,
as farce, and not a tear-strewn tragedy.
When young we most of us
who grew up “sensitive” pretend
that we’re not sensitive at all,
that life’s a joke we’ve heard and told before.
But we’re always the...
When once I beheld a cynical pose
the font of adult life,
a carapace of irony
protecting me
from all that slit my heart,
I’d never quite maintain the grip
required to see
the world as comedy,
as farce, and not a tear-strewn tragedy.
When young we most of us
who grew up “sensitive” pretend
that we’re not sensitive at all,
that life’s a joke we’ve heard and told before.
But we’re always the...
#LifeStruggles
#LifeCycle
63 reads
1 Comment
In Father’s Room
The house on Gorton Street had been one of several whose streets led down to the docks in times gone by, labourers’ houses whose doors and windows were flush with the walls so that the buildings looked like great rectangular blocks, with no adornments. The house appeared in black-and-white films, from the days when an MP’s wife warned that we shouldn’t give the working-class coal because they’ll just store it in their bathtubs. Children would play with sticks and hoops and dollies made from socks while women with scarves around their heads called them in, hauled laundry, and brought home...
#evil
#scary
#ghosts #horror
#ghosts #horror
63 reads
2 Comments
The Words and the Music
Once in the cinema
my friend was looking at his phone
as always
and so I looked to see
what occupied him.
It was a synopsis of the film
that we were watching.
And suddenly I pictured us
watching Mozart performed in Vienna,
periwigged, gold-trimmed,
as rather than look at the stage and listen
he wore great muffs about his ears
and studied the music sheet in his lap.
my friend was looking at his phone
as always
and so I looked to see
what occupied him.
It was a synopsis of the film
that we were watching.
And suddenly I pictured us
watching Mozart performed in Vienna,
periwigged, gold-trimmed,
as rather than look at the stage and listen
he wore great muffs about his ears
and studied the music sheet in his lap.
#music
#PopCulture
58 reads
2 Comments
From a Conversation on Messenger
My friend’s ex husband has died
And she doesn’t quite know how to feel about that.
We don’t always know what we feel
When people who were bad but close to us
Pass on. We want our ministers of grace
To give us balm as well. But there’s no saving face
Sometimes. We must love ourselves or collapse.
And she doesn’t quite know how to feel about that.
We don’t always know what we feel
When people who were bad but close to us
Pass on. We want our ministers of grace
To give us balm as well. But there’s no saving face
Sometimes. We must love ourselves or collapse.
#love
#grief
#death #LifeStruggles
#death #LifeStruggles
65 reads
2 Comments
Politics
A canvasser for Labour came today
and asked if I’d like to raise any
local issues. I took his pamphlet,
told him no, and he asked whom I’d
be voting for. Probably not Labour,
I said. He thanked me and walked away.
That’s the problem with the left,
I thought as a leftist myself. It doesn’t
care why anymore, and it’s not even left,
just in the middle as Rome burns,
turning up its nose at voters they’d have
to convince. At least if they’re poor.
But maybe it was just that it was 03:00PM,
and my pyjama...
and asked if I’d like to raise any
local issues. I took his pamphlet,
told him no, and he asked whom I’d
be voting for. Probably not Labour,
I said. He thanked me and walked away.
That’s the problem with the left,
I thought as a leftist myself. It doesn’t
care why anymore, and it’s not even left,
just in the middle as Rome burns,
turning up its nose at voters they’d have
to convince. At least if they’re poor.
But maybe it was just that it was 03:00PM,
and my pyjama...
#politics
55 reads
1 Comment
Oak and Pulp
The muses turned polite, demure,
illiterate Tudor wives declaring books
a common thing. And so too pure
their patrons became, casting looks
at plot, suspense, and imagination,
declaring themselves too good
for such base ribaldry. The sleek quotidian
replaced, as pulp was brought from wood
and sold like hotcakes in a cold climate.
The genre tsars grew rich, as oak sellers
became bitter and pondered on their fate,
the bourgeois dearth on lists of bestsellers.
And so they started stealing tropes,
and said of course all great...
illiterate Tudor wives declaring books
a common thing. And so too pure
their patrons became, casting looks
at plot, suspense, and imagination,
declaring themselves too good
for such base ribaldry. The sleek quotidian
replaced, as pulp was brought from wood
and sold like hotcakes in a cold climate.
The genre tsars grew rich, as oak sellers
became bitter and pondered on their fate,
the bourgeois dearth on lists of bestsellers.
And so they started stealing tropes,
and said of course all great...
#books
53 reads
1 Comment
late Jan
late Jan and my toes turn blue
in the living room
and I find myself worrying for the cat
who cries to go out
but soon enough scurries back
not wanting to be frozen like
a miniature woolly mammoth
in the living room
and I find myself worrying for the cat
who cries to go out
but soon enough scurries back
not wanting to be frozen like
a miniature woolly mammoth
#nature
60 reads
4 Comments
Troll
Reading “poison pen” mysteries
from the Golden Age makes
you realise how painstaking it was
to troll someone way back when.
Kids today don’t know they’re born.
In their grandparents’ day you had
to handwrite and make trips to the pillar box,
and keep your wits as wise as any fox…
just so your tongue could be let loose to wag,
and call the neighbour’s wife a slag.
from the Golden Age makes
you realise how painstaking it was
to troll someone way back when.
Kids today don’t know they’re born.
In their grandparents’ day you had
to handwrite and make trips to the pillar box,
and keep your wits as wise as any fox…
just so your tongue could be let loose to wag,
and call the neighbour’s wife a slag.
#technology
#books
#funny #historical
#funny #historical
96 reads
2 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)