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.
LOVE POEM
Published
5th Jun 2022 10:05pm
5th Jun 2022 10:05pm
To a Not So Good Father
a Father’s Day poem
How I could have seen your face
so many years ago and understood you then!
But it’s okay, Dad. It was just that old devil
who clutched your boyish heart
and squeezed it like a lemon husk.
I see you now, clearly. And how
in the 1950s you were a little boy at play
in fields you couldn’t understand.
And that you did your best on a jubilee day,
aloft a tree and reaching in
to stroke a little nest of twigs and baby birds.
And though you let the devil win later,
in that simple moment you were just...
How I could have seen your face
so many years ago and understood you then!
But it’s okay, Dad. It was just that old devil
who clutched your boyish heart
and squeezed it like a lemon husk.
I see you now, clearly. And how
in the 1950s you were a little boy at play
in fields you couldn’t understand.
And that you did your best on a jubilee day,
aloft a tree and reaching in
to stroke a little nest of twigs and baby birds.
And though you let the devil win later,
in that simple moment you were just...
#childhood
#fatherhood
261 reads
0 Comments
NON-FICTION PROSE
Published
5th Jun 2022 4:33am
5th Jun 2022 4:33am
My Culture Fix
My favourite author and book
Flannery O'Connor is my favourite author, by far. There are too many books to name a single favourite or even a list of favourites, but an obvious one for me is O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, a Southern Gothic (though I think that she hated the term) novel about the raising of a Christian prophet. Another obvious one is the Bible, King James edition. I love English literature, and it's not just the Bible, it's the Bible of the language that I'm writing in now.
My tastes tend to run to the Gothic, so a lot of my favourites tend to be either...
Flannery O'Connor is my favourite author, by far. There are too many books to name a single favourite or even a list of favourites, but an obvious one for me is O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, a Southern Gothic (though I think that she hated the term) novel about the raising of a Christian prophet. Another obvious one is the Bible, King James edition. I love English literature, and it's not just the Bible, it's the Bible of the language that I'm writing in now.
My tastes tend to run to the Gothic, so a lot of my favourites tend to be either...
#nonfiction
304 reads
2 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
2nd Jun 2022 12:58pm
2nd Jun 2022 12:58pm
The First Man in the Fire
Shadrach was in the underground
and of that basement world.
The Pharoah had consigned him,
and so the truth was proved in whim.
The fourth man came and saved all three.
His name and word were like his deed,
a ghost of holiness, of truth that's proved in sin.
But I'm the first man, pale and thin.
Shadrach. Abednego. Meshach.
The first, second, and third. The rack
and Mobius, and flesh, and human sin.
Looking out from flaming tin.
The Pharoah far above and looking in,
and wondering why some men sin.
The...
and of that basement world.
The Pharoah had consigned him,
and so the truth was proved in whim.
The fourth man came and saved all three.
His name and word were like his deed,
a ghost of holiness, of truth that's proved in sin.
But I'm the first man, pale and thin.
Shadrach. Abednego. Meshach.
The first, second, and third. The rack
and Mobius, and flesh, and human sin.
Looking out from flaming tin.
The Pharoah far above and looking in,
and wondering why some men sin.
The...
#God
#humankind
234 reads
2 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
2nd Jun 2022 12:25pm
2nd Jun 2022 12:25pm
Smile
#abuse
#DomesticViolence
305 reads
0 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
1st Jun 2022 9:50pm
1st Jun 2022 9:50pm
A Man Like You
The truth is that I’ve never quite been gay,
more homosexual. The melancholic strain
has always run too deep for me to dance
as if no one’s watching. I need there to be
no one at all before I dance like space
and time conform to my body. The man
I love is melancholic too, with creased
and softly etched features, an old of shape
and quiet man, a man like me, like you.
more homosexual. The melancholic strain
has always run too deep for me to dance
as if no one’s watching. I need there to be
no one at all before I dance like space
and time conform to my body. The man
I love is melancholic too, with creased
and softly etched features, an old of shape
and quiet man, a man like me, like you.
#love
#gay
339 reads
6 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
1st Jun 2022 10:12am
1st Jun 2022 10:12am
June 1st
Never liked Pride much.
Never had much use, I guess,
for angel wings and body paint,
and my coordination wasn’t right
for dancing on a float.
Never had much use, I guess,
for angel wings and body paint,
and my coordination wasn’t right
for dancing on a float.
#SelfWorth
189 reads
4 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
31st May 2022 10:46pm
31st May 2022 10:46pm
The Temporal Transvestite
Sometimes I catch myself
in 1842 bashing a Bible on
a podium at church.
A Bible-black hearted scion.
Even though it’s 2022
and I could not fit
a cassock if I tried,
preferring salmon pink.
in 1842 bashing a Bible on
a podium at church.
A Bible-black hearted scion.
Even though it’s 2022
and I could not fit
a cassock if I tried,
preferring salmon pink.
#loneliness
#funny
263 reads
0 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
31st May 2022 12:11pm
31st May 2022 12:11pm
Totally Unrelated to the Current Prime Minister
Read an article once.
About a woman
taking hers sons
to visit universities.
Presumably, then,
eighteen or so in age.
Yet on the trip
this journalist needed
to stop her boys
pinching and punching
one another.
And I wondered, then.
I wondered just
how long it takes
for posh boys to grow up.
About a woman
taking hers sons
to visit universities.
Presumably, then,
eighteen or so in age.
Yet on the trip
this journalist needed
to stop her boys
pinching and punching
one another.
And I wondered, then.
I wondered just
how long it takes
for posh boys to grow up.
#politics
246 reads
1 Comment
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
30th May 2022 2:47pm
30th May 2022 2:47pm
The Victorian Stain
The Belgian Congo might appear
a thousand fathoms far away,
but it's as close to me
as Reg's Fish & Chips.
I suppose it's the old
Victorian stain, the cold
that is reaching for God in my heart,
and finding it only part by part.
a thousand fathoms far away,
but it's as close to me
as Reg's Fish & Chips.
I suppose it's the old
Victorian stain, the cold
that is reaching for God in my heart,
and finding it only part by part.
#despair
186 reads
1 Comment
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
29th May 2022 12:59pm
29th May 2022 12:59pm
A Clean Geometry
How can I know
when knowing involves
a knowledge of
the truth of pain,
how agonies of heart and mind
just shrink, it seems,
before the knife and twisted vein?
Because, perhaps, the cross to bear
is not always a shape of splintered wood,
a clean geometry of hurt.
It leaps from heart to mind
and back again, supported by
a thousand whispers in the night.
The dark night of the soul's
exactly that, in its essence.
A night without stars
and hoping for daybreak.
when knowing involves
a knowledge of
the truth of pain,
how agonies of heart and mind
just shrink, it seems,
before the knife and twisted vein?
Because, perhaps, the cross to bear
is not always a shape of splintered wood,
a clean geometry of hurt.
It leaps from heart to mind
and back again, supported by
a thousand whispers in the night.
The dark night of the soul's
exactly that, in its essence.
A night without stars
and hoping for daybreak.
#faith
339 reads
0 Comments
UPBEAT INSPIRATIONAL POEM
Published
29th May 2022 11:50am
29th May 2022 11:50am
in a strange way
looking back, it's a surprise
that I survived my childhood,
what with the mental illness that
in likelihood has killed
a countless horde of kids,
both feeding in
and feeding out,
both to and from
society and mind.
and I realise now
that in a strange way
it was books that saved me.
how can I kill myself,
I thought... when I haven't
yet read every Hercule Poirot?
that I survived my childhood,
what with the mental illness that
in likelihood has killed
a countless horde of kids,
both feeding in
and feeding out,
both to and from
society and mind.
and I realise now
that in a strange way
it was books that saved me.
how can I kill myself,
I thought... when I haven't
yet read every Hercule Poirot?
#MentalHealth
423 reads
5 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
26th May 2022 1:16pm
26th May 2022 1:16pm
Eng Lit 101
An academic looks
at a pile of books
and says
‘how best can I protect
these from the world.’
A writer looks
at them and asks
‘how best can I distribute these?’
at a pile of books
and says
‘how best can I protect
these from the world.’
A writer looks
at them and asks
‘how best can I distribute these?’
#school
#college
481 reads
4 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
