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
11th Dec 2024 1:42am
11th Dec 2024 1:42am
Love is…
An obligation carved across
the leaves of stone, genetic book
of life, sometimes diluted by a loss
of love given by those supposed to look
to your development, give care.
I can’t say my genetic book will close.
I still receive its meanings now, for those
I’ve long since disavowed, would soak
in time, indifference. We don’t deserve
but neither are we unworthy of love.
It glows in darkness like a bellied stove,
its heat sometimes a secret thing.
the leaves of stone, genetic book
of life, sometimes diluted by a loss
of love given by those supposed to look
to your development, give care.
I can’t say my genetic book will close.
I still receive its meanings now, for those
I’ve long since disavowed, would soak
in time, indifference. We don’t deserve
but neither are we unworthy of love.
It glows in darkness like a bellied stove,
its heat sometimes a secret thing.
#aging
#family
#love #memories
#love #memories
109 reads
0 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
4th Dec 2024 5:56am
4th Dec 2024 5:56am
Reading Victorian ghost stories
Reading Victorian ghost stories
can sometimes leave you wondering,
when authors say that what she said
when haunting yonder glen
cannot be written down ‘til dead,
because it be wrought with unpleasantries
unfit for ears that need guiding.
But from the vantage point of “modern day”
I cannot really say if what D Dinglet said,
as Parson spoke to her (the upright Cornishman
misled, perhaps, by some prudish morality)
was truly horrible - that she was murdered, say,
or forced upon by him she claims wronged her.
Or if she simply...
can sometimes leave you wondering,
when authors say that what she said
when haunting yonder glen
cannot be written down ‘til dead,
because it be wrought with unpleasantries
unfit for ears that need guiding.
But from the vantage point of “modern day”
I cannot really say if what D Dinglet said,
as Parson spoke to her (the upright Cornishman
misled, perhaps, by some prudish morality)
was truly horrible - that she was murdered, say,
or forced upon by him she claims wronged her.
Or if she simply...
#culture
#ghosts
#historical #morality
#historical #morality
102 reads
4 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
1st Dec 2024 2:26pm
1st Dec 2024 2:26pm
Blindness
People, young man, are stupid.
You won’t realise how stupid they are
until you understand
that you’re just as stupid as them.
You scrabble in the dark as much
when it comes to the meanings of things
as he who blamed a temple God
for his wife’s miscarriage,
and she who thinks she won’t be gay
if she’d just pray that sin away.
Or him who felt that science said
that other races must lay dead,
or anyone from dunce to polymath.
We all just wriggle in the dark
like worms fearing the child’s wrath
when its...
You won’t realise how stupid they are
until you understand
that you’re just as stupid as them.
You scrabble in the dark as much
when it comes to the meanings of things
as he who blamed a temple God
for his wife’s miscarriage,
and she who thinks she won’t be gay
if she’d just pray that sin away.
Or him who felt that science said
that other races must lay dead,
or anyone from dunce to polymath.
We all just wriggle in the dark
like worms fearing the child’s wrath
when its...
#anxiety
#atheism
#death #fear
#death #fear
97 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
27th Nov 2024 6:34pm
27th Nov 2024 6:34pm
destroyed, renewed
Something like a category fault...
a crease in what should be
the logical cleaving
of masc to femme.
But as the cold of '55
becomes the spring of '56
I'm folding into you
and it feels utterly perfect,
in those moments between
the tentative movements
of hands on arms
and when I spin to push back into you -
the record player singing its old songs -
and when the last thrust leaves us both
destroyed, renewed, destroyed, renewed.
a crease in what should be
the logical cleaving
of masc to femme.
But as the cold of '55
becomes the spring of '56
I'm folding into you
and it feels utterly perfect,
in those moments between
the tentative movements
of hands on arms
and when I spin to push back into you -
the record player singing its old songs -
and when the last thrust leaves us both
destroyed, renewed, destroyed, renewed.
#gay
#LGBT
#love #sex
#love #sex
149 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
25th Nov 2024 1:42pm
25th Nov 2024 1:42pm
Tops & Tails
They gathered in a room of the hotel that served as a sort of dressing room for waitresses, who functioned essentially as entertainers. The girls weren't dressed in formal wear but in a showgirl ensemble that combined tops and tails with fishnet stockings. A few of the more imposing waitresses even wielded canes like Old Hollywood tap dancers.
Mrs Berkeley sailed into the room, all frontage and steerage. Her chest and rear were of proportions that the girls in her care could only have nightmares about. She wore her hair in the tortured bob of women her age and size. She was...
Mrs Berkeley sailed into the room, all frontage and steerage. Her chest and rear were of proportions that the girls in her care could only have nightmares about. She wore her hair in the tortured bob of women her age and size. She was...
#fiction
#revenge
#ShortStory #violence
#ShortStory #violence
77 reads
2 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
22nd Nov 2024 3:55am
22nd Nov 2024 3:55am
innate
a friend of mine talks of conversion
as if there could be such a thing
when what I am is just… innate, a fact,
like grass is green
and Mexico is a country in North America…
and sex has little to do with it,
it’s just an urge that carries no shame,
or shouldn’t. but somehow I can’t say
that I don’t care what St Paul said,
perhaps because a doubt lingers
that maybe it’s a sin, though I doubt it…
more like it’s just because I’m still learning
to state myself and claim a pride
in who I am, to simply be without caring, ...
as if there could be such a thing
when what I am is just… innate, a fact,
like grass is green
and Mexico is a country in North America…
and sex has little to do with it,
it’s just an urge that carries no shame,
or shouldn’t. but somehow I can’t say
that I don’t care what St Paul said,
perhaps because a doubt lingers
that maybe it’s a sin, though I doubt it…
more like it’s just because I’m still learning
to state myself and claim a pride
in who I am, to simply be without caring, ...
#faith
#hate
#LGBT #love
#LGBT #love
94 reads
2 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
20th Nov 2024 00:55am
20th Nov 2024 00:55am
songs of loss and innocence
they play forever in your head
the temples expanding
as all our bodies age
and store up memories
until they die
and all that loss and innocence
flies out and impregnates the air
the temples of our thoughts
and feelings fall apart
the temples expanding
as all our bodies age
and store up memories
until they die
and all that loss and innocence
flies out and impregnates the air
the temples of our thoughts
and feelings fall apart
#death
#LifeCycle
#memories #spiritual
#memories #spiritual
122 reads
1 Comment
DARK POEM
Published
7th Nov 2024 9:59pm
7th Nov 2024 9:59pm
Teenage Vampire
how can you know the distance run
between the longing and the sun…
when I was just a little boy
they caught me with a rat,
about to sink my fangs in it.
the sun slanting between
the houses on that row
to where I crouched beside the hose and bikes
and contemplated blood.
they called me mad
and locked me up
and gave out pills
like sweets on Christmas morn.
they tried to unlock a room in my skull
that would contain the answers to my self.
abandoned at just four years old, ...
between the longing and the sun…
when I was just a little boy
they caught me with a rat,
about to sink my fangs in it.
the sun slanting between
the houses on that row
to where I crouched beside the hose and bikes
and contemplated blood.
they called me mad
and locked me up
and gave out pills
like sweets on Christmas morn.
they tried to unlock a room in my skull
that would contain the answers to my self.
abandoned at just four years old, ...
#murder
#suffering
#teens #vampires
#teens #vampires
85 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
6th Nov 2024 4:07am
6th Nov 2024 4:07am
The Party on the Stairs
We had a party on the stairs,
the ghostly belles and I,
and in that space between the dawn
and when the cockerel cries
we talked of many things,
including how I’d one day wear
a death mask just like theirs,
of powder and patch
and one beauty mark
to anchor the face to the room.
How in this world a woman is a ghost
before even her limbs have stilled,
her heart stopped beating in its cage,
her corset loosed at last.
the ghostly belles and I,
and in that space between the dawn
and when the cockerel cries
we talked of many things,
including how I’d one day wear
a death mask just like theirs,
of powder and patch
and one beauty mark
to anchor the face to the room.
How in this world a woman is a ghost
before even her limbs have stilled,
her heart stopped beating in its cage,
her corset loosed at last.
#beauty
#feminism
#ghosts #historical
#ghosts #historical
109 reads
0 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
4th Nov 2024 12:24pm
4th Nov 2024 12:24pm
Whorehouse Music
The carriage pulled up outside a gabled house with bars on the upper windows, below a full moon beaming light on the scene as if it was a stage play. A small, stout man in restrained courtly dress emerged from the carriage, pursued by a younger man in full royal regalia, sleeves slashed to reveal silk lining the colour of green jade, thick hair greased and waved in the modern style.
They were met at the door of the establishment by a madam whose wrinkled skin and flat chest were supported by shimmering black lace. The stout man found her attractive for what he perceived as her grit...
They were met at the door of the establishment by a madam whose wrinkled skin and flat chest were supported by shimmering black lace. The stout man found her attractive for what he perceived as her grit...
#horror
#ShortStory
#werewolves #witches
#werewolves #witches
93 reads
4 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
4th Nov 2024 00:57am
4th Nov 2024 00:57am
Demon
I’ve been around ten thousand years or more
(who remembers things as dull as time?)
and in my age have seen such crime
that crows would blink and blush, a whore
cry “etiquette!” I’ve seen a desert-dweller kill
his own brother, for gold sewn into his saddle.
I’ve seen a Pope rape and molest. A chill
sweep down a modern street as holy twaddle,
to justify sin, strives to make sense of a girl
shot dead. Her bicycle lay in the street,
the ribbons on the handlebars like wheat,
still dancing when stirred by the wind. The twirl
of...
(who remembers things as dull as time?)
and in my age have seen such crime
that crows would blink and blush, a whore
cry “etiquette!” I’ve seen a desert-dweller kill
his own brother, for gold sewn into his saddle.
I’ve seen a Pope rape and molest. A chill
sweep down a modern street as holy twaddle,
to justify sin, strives to make sense of a girl
shot dead. Her bicycle lay in the street,
the ribbons on the handlebars like wheat,
still dancing when stirred by the wind. The twirl
of...
#despair
#devil
#evil #horror
#evil #horror
127 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
2nd Nov 2024 10:54am
2nd Nov 2024 10:54am
Meditation on Disorder
Fourteen in 1970,
reared in the blackstuff and the piss,
and gone before the concrete gave
to bad fashions and closed coal pits.
You feel as though a prophet out of time
has raised his head to talk not Godly things,
but sanctified despair, disorder beautiful, a bird that sings
of coffins and of crime.
About you films and plays and shows have been made,
I'd like it if you stayed
in only those disordered sounds
that so clearly evoke
a car that hurtles down the M1 late at night,
a walk home through the darkness rent ...
reared in the blackstuff and the piss,
and gone before the concrete gave
to bad fashions and closed coal pits.
You feel as though a prophet out of time
has raised his head to talk not Godly things,
but sanctified despair, disorder beautiful, a bird that sings
of coffins and of crime.
About you films and plays and shows have been made,
I'd like it if you stayed
in only those disordered sounds
that so clearly evoke
a car that hurtles down the M1 late at night,
a walk home through the darkness rent ...
#dark
#depression
#love #music
#love #music
129 reads
2 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
