Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)

on listening to the album Seventh Tree

The harlequin of discotheque.
Mischievous and sensual.
Cavorts with giant owls, baroque
and russet-curled. Anarchical
without an ideology,
as utterly serene
in green insanity
as -eval glens and glades. The London clown
wears leather boots, a pirate's hat,
and sings to seven trees, of seventh sons.

Anatomy is fraught. Tradition rent.
Druidic priestess of the marsh,
a pagan goddess drawing near.
Her clownery is cellular.

The MP stood aside to let the police in. He said that he’d found her after turning up for a dinner date (not romantic, he stressed. Purely business. We just needed to compare notes on an upcoming event) and finding her door open. He walked in, calling her name. He could tell that something was off, but he was a decent guy and couldn’t just turn around and leave. And then he found her. Swinging from a bizarre contraption in her bedroom. It was like a cross between a sex swing and an interrogation device from the Inquisition.

Several detectives paled on seeing the aftermath. One...

We fall in many bodies, many times.
Outside the Christian faith, the tower chimes
our deaths, but also our rebirths.
We do not sing dirges,
nor proceed in black garments, cross
the squares or streets with gold aloft.
As graveyards gather damp and moss.
We sing to dance, we laugh, we croft...
We share and love our bodies like
they weren't just an old man's mistake.
As if the rotten dike of time
must be observed always, to never slake
a human heart. Which is,
when all's been said, a reddish blade of grass.

The church is cold and empty in
its blank modernity. The sin
has been washed out and autumn leaves
put in its place. From floor to eaves
it's been whitewashed, the church.
And God's facsimile, to teach
the truth of sacrifice with splintered cross,
is gone. Replaced with varnished lines. Amass,
and sing to what is left.
If anything was there at all. Bereft
of barbaristic faith,
we carry on with bake sales, the laith.
The British symbols cherished by
a world wanting gentility.