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.
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
26th Apr 2022 6:14pm
26th Apr 2022 6:14pm
In Defence of Trash
I’m a meat-and-potatoes man, myself,’ he explained to Theodora. ‘Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t read trash. Bad example for the fellows at the school. They look up to one a bit, you know.” - from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Those who read for pleasure
and not just self-esteem,
not breaking our wrists
on hardback chunks
of raw Elizabethan text
we’re not prepared enough to feel,
are just as tactile as carpenters,
just as appalled by bad design
as cloth-makers or anyone with taste.
We like the lurid, gaudy, bright, ...
Those who read for pleasure
and not just self-esteem,
not breaking our wrists
on hardback chunks
of raw Elizabethan text
we’re not prepared enough to feel,
are just as tactile as carpenters,
just as appalled by bad design
as cloth-makers or anyone with taste.
We like the lurid, gaudy, bright, ...
#books
257 reads
2 Comments
EROTIC POEM
Published
26th Apr 2022 4:08pm
26th Apr 2022 4:08pm
Male Arms
it doesn’t un-man me to say
that a kink in my design
might have bent me out of shape
and made me something new
(and just as worthy of respect)
I don’t relinquish what I am
by admitting that male arms
were what I wanted in the dark,
when lost and sensitive to pain
I imagined those arms around me
that a kink in my design
might have bent me out of shape
and made me something new
(and just as worthy of respect)
I don’t relinquish what I am
by admitting that male arms
were what I wanted in the dark,
when lost and sensitive to pain
I imagined those arms around me
#LGBT
370 reads
2 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
25th Apr 2022 10:29pm
25th Apr 2022 10:29pm
Why I call myself a Pagan
I have no rituals,
no symbols that I’ve yet defined.
But churches of the Pagan Church
need not be built at all, not hewed
from wood or set with bricks.
The nave can be a road between trees,
forming an arcade through which the light
is filtered and distributed,
making revelations on an Essex morning.
Even these vulgar runes
you’re reading now
are sanctified when read
while lying on the grass,
and held in place by sky and field.
The Pagan bible is unfinished,
and always will be,
so long as...
no symbols that I’ve yet defined.
But churches of the Pagan Church
need not be built at all, not hewed
from wood or set with bricks.
The nave can be a road between trees,
forming an arcade through which the light
is filtered and distributed,
making revelations on an Essex morning.
Even these vulgar runes
you’re reading now
are sanctified when read
while lying on the grass,
and held in place by sky and field.
The Pagan bible is unfinished,
and always will be,
so long as...
#pagan
590 reads
8 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
25th Apr 2022 3:29pm
25th Apr 2022 3:29pm
The Matter of His Own Skin
The purveyor of cocaine is almost always a coward, especially in the matter of his own skin. - "The scourge of cocaine", The Times; April 25, 1922
Some say the darkest minds
are those that bend
towards profit only.
Depravity is born of human urge,
but caught bleeding and then deformed,
directed into satisfaction formed
in ugliness, terror.
But simple numbers rising like
an arch towards Heaven, even when
the firmament was long ago surpassed,
reflect a heart of everlasting ice.
A slice of sickness too bound up...
Some say the darkest minds
are those that bend
towards profit only.
Depravity is born of human urge,
but caught bleeding and then deformed,
directed into satisfaction formed
in ugliness, terror.
But simple numbers rising like
an arch towards Heaven, even when
the firmament was long ago surpassed,
reflect a heart of everlasting ice.
A slice of sickness too bound up...
#dark
303 reads
2 Comments
UPBEAT INSPIRATIONAL POEM
Published
24th Apr 2022 5:33am
24th Apr 2022 5:33am
A Benefit of Hindsight
It was cold that night
when I walked out of doors,
looking at lighted windows
and wondering what it would be like
to stand behind them,
if there’d be sofas, television, food,
books and light and radiation.
There were those in the house
that I’d left, of course,
but also a man who looked at me
not as a right, but an obligation.
(‘I’d still love you if you were queer...’
how loving those words must have sounded,
to him. How riven with sorrowful burden,
to me, arriving so soon to the wake
of ‘queers are...
when I walked out of doors,
looking at lighted windows
and wondering what it would be like
to stand behind them,
if there’d be sofas, television, food,
books and light and radiation.
There were those in the house
that I’d left, of course,
but also a man who looked at me
not as a right, but an obligation.
(‘I’d still love you if you were queer...’
how loving those words must have sounded,
to him. How riven with sorrowful burden,
to me, arriving so soon to the wake
of ‘queers are...
#forgiveness
356 reads
3 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
22nd Apr 2022 6:26pm
22nd Apr 2022 6:26pm
The Shocking Thing
on cycles of abuse
the unloved become
the unloving
unless they find a fresh resource,
a desert spring
to drink from and bathe in
be it some avatar of love,
a God or therapist or just
a theme of loving touch.
if left alone
the last remaining flora dies
and leaves behind the savages
gathered outside the door,
demanding Lot's daughters.
the only shocking thing
is that we refuse
to understand this
the unloved become
the unloving
unless they find a fresh resource,
a desert spring
to drink from and bathe in
be it some avatar of love,
a God or therapist or just
a theme of loving touch.
if left alone
the last remaining flora dies
and leaves behind the savages
gathered outside the door,
demanding Lot's daughters.
the only shocking thing
is that we refuse
to understand this
#violence
#abuse
#DomesticViolence
537 reads
6 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
21st Apr 2022 9:58pm
21st Apr 2022 9:58pm
Aphorism for Strongmen
any man who needs
a love that’s enforced
with indiscriminate murder
he who relies
on breaking flesh like bread
cannot be truly strong
but is as mindless
and whimsical
as mudslides and earthquakes,
and so just as incapable
of giving and receiving love
a love that’s enforced
with indiscriminate murder
he who relies
on breaking flesh like bread
cannot be truly strong
but is as mindless
and whimsical
as mudslides and earthquakes,
and so just as incapable
of giving and receiving love
#war
234 reads
2 Comments
EROTIC POEM
Published
19th Apr 2022 10:28pm
19th Apr 2022 10:28pm
Giving Yourself to a Woman
he wants to show her love
but cannot speak to her
because he is afraid
of smashing the glass
that is her heart’s window
and so in his desperation
he ties himself to the bed
but not before stripping away
his clothes
and then his skin
but cannot speak to her
because he is afraid
of smashing the glass
that is her heart’s window
and so in his desperation
he ties himself to the bed
but not before stripping away
his clothes
and then his skin
#erotic
338 reads
1 Comment
UPBEAT INSPIRATIONAL POEM
Published
19th Apr 2022 5:13pm
19th Apr 2022 5:13pm
The Joy of Post
for a friend and an aunt, respectively
American stamps are a treat.
This year's ones are Janis Joplin,
blue-skinned and purple-lensed,
a woman in alien form,
two pumpkin-headed silhouettes
in a Gothic window,
playful Autumn spooks,
Disney's Gaston
lain out like Ego's kiss,
a primary-coloured Narcissus,
and a pink
and jolly bedsheet ghost
declaring USA FOREVER.
But even the good old Queen,
depicted as if in bas-relief
against a post-box red,
attached to a small
and...
American stamps are a treat.
This year's ones are Janis Joplin,
blue-skinned and purple-lensed,
a woman in alien form,
two pumpkin-headed silhouettes
in a Gothic window,
playful Autumn spooks,
Disney's Gaston
lain out like Ego's kiss,
a primary-coloured Narcissus,
and a pink
and jolly bedsheet ghost
declaring USA FOREVER.
But even the good old Queen,
depicted as if in bas-relief
against a post-box red,
attached to a small
and...
#friendship
227 reads
2 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
19th Apr 2022 2:22pm
19th Apr 2022 2:22pm
An Aggressor
All she wants is him
to be non-violent.
But she can’t be a woman if
she isn’t compliant.
to be non-violent.
But she can’t be a woman if
she isn’t compliant.
#women
382 reads
2 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
19th Apr 2022 00:37am
19th Apr 2022 00:37am
Father & Baby Care
I can forgive that you
made me
feel dirty and unloved
because there was a time
when you were confused too
and found your own path
away from that.
and so were trying in your way
to pull the bracken from the path,
to show me where it lay.
but when you did
the bracken struck my face
and blinded me to you
and thus to me as well.
and when I cried you couldn’t see
for you were blinded too,
and anger was the only path you knew,
so stormed it like a lost soldier
and only made...
made me
feel dirty and unloved
because there was a time
when you were confused too
and found your own path
away from that.
and so were trying in your way
to pull the bracken from the path,
to show me where it lay.
but when you did
the bracken struck my face
and blinded me to you
and thus to me as well.
and when I cried you couldn’t see
for you were blinded too,
and anger was the only path you knew,
so stormed it like a lost soldier
and only made...
#fatherhood
250 reads
2 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
17th Apr 2022 9:53pm
17th Apr 2022 9:53pm
For the Worst Poet
to William McGonagall, 1825 to 1902, popularly regarded as an extremely bad poet
You may have been too lost
in forms that other people use, sometimes,
trying to wear Lord Tennyson’s clothes,
to pluck a daffodil with Wordsworth’s hands,
but all your heart was somewhere in those lines.
I picture you walking to Balmoral
to ask Victoria, and thus Victorians,
to make you national poet.
How your legs must have hurt!
(In serving your thoughts and feelings.)
And how it must have hurt when you were told
that she wasn’t home,...
You may have been too lost
in forms that other people use, sometimes,
trying to wear Lord Tennyson’s clothes,
to pluck a daffodil with Wordsworth’s hands,
but all your heart was somewhere in those lines.
I picture you walking to Balmoral
to ask Victoria, and thus Victorians,
to make you national poet.
How your legs must have hurt!
(In serving your thoughts and feelings.)
And how it must have hurt when you were told
that she wasn’t home,...
#WritingPoetry
257 reads
3 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
