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.
STORY POEM
Published
31st Oct 2024 12:25pm
31st Oct 2024 12:25pm
Witch
I think that I'd have been happy
if I'd been born a witch.
Without any toes but still able
to dance, and ride above
the steeples of
this green Jerusalem's churches.
To creep in through the chimney pots,
to make brews in the dark,
to draw a set of lots
on each Samhain
to see whose cattle dies this night.
A mark impervious to pain
spread out inside one arm, a dark wine stain
that says I'm joined
in what God leaves as undiscerned,
the skittering, the sins conjoined.
if I'd been born a witch.
Without any toes but still able
to dance, and ride above
the steeples of
this green Jerusalem's churches.
To creep in through the chimney pots,
to make brews in the dark,
to draw a set of lots
on each Samhain
to see whose cattle dies this night.
A mark impervious to pain
spread out inside one arm, a dark wine stain
that says I'm joined
in what God leaves as undiscerned,
the skittering, the sins conjoined.
#Halloween
#historical
#pagan #witches
#pagan #witches
96 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
25th Oct 2024 7:35pm
25th Oct 2024 7:35pm
Plantation
Next on the docket is an odd little item from the early '90s that should have gone straight-to-video and was likely made with the intention of using it to fill NEW RELEASE shelves, which in those days were the equivalent of streaming services filling themselves with junk so as to have some kind of consumer product available. Nothing really changes, except on a surface level.
Using the post-Civil War US South as a theme but made by a British studio on backlots off the motorway, pop culture legend has it that Christopher Lee was going to appear as a favour to someone or other until...
Using the post-Civil War US South as a theme but made by a British studio on backlots off the motorway, pop culture legend has it that Christopher Lee was going to appear as a favour to someone or other until...
#ShortStory
93 reads
1 Comment
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
23rd Oct 2024 3:10pm
23rd Oct 2024 3:10pm
The Girls in the Van
I see the van sometimes, idling by
the nightclubs and the bars,
the drive-thru restaurants.
They wear the uniforms of girls
of their respective periods: leg warmers,
tees, scrunchies, hairspray (gallons
and gallons of that), and each
is wrought with some old wound:
a slash across the throat
is most common, on occasion
a stab to the chest. Nothing can staunch
the laughing, though; the endless
flow of youthful joy.
The youngest is sixteen, the oldest twenty-three.
And now across the parking court tarmac, ...
the nightclubs and the bars,
the drive-thru restaurants.
They wear the uniforms of girls
of their respective periods: leg warmers,
tees, scrunchies, hairspray (gallons
and gallons of that), and each
is wrought with some old wound:
a slash across the throat
is most common, on occasion
a stab to the chest. Nothing can staunch
the laughing, though; the endless
flow of youthful joy.
The youngest is sixteen, the oldest twenty-three.
And now across the parking court tarmac, ...
#ghosts
#murder
#violence #women
#violence #women
128 reads
3 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
21st Oct 2024 1:53am
21st Oct 2024 1:53am
They Come Back Through
a psalm for Samhain
They come back through on Halloween…
The line between the living and the dead
is frailest come evensong, when light is seen
to die beyond the farms, and bread
is broken one last time before the winter sheen
outspreads across the roof of each homestead.
They come back through on Halloween,
the sailors lost when campfires
became confused with lighthouses,
the children dead by violence,
the battle-scared and lost, all echoes of whence
we go when forced to cross the line between.
They come back...
They come back through on Halloween…
The line between the living and the dead
is frailest come evensong, when light is seen
to die beyond the farms, and bread
is broken one last time before the winter sheen
outspreads across the roof of each homestead.
They come back through on Halloween,
the sailors lost when campfires
became confused with lighthouses,
the children dead by violence,
the battle-scared and lost, all echoes of whence
we go when forced to cross the line between.
They come back...
#ghosts
#Halloween
#mythology #winter
#mythology #winter
132 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
18th Oct 2024 00:27am
18th Oct 2024 00:27am
totems
my dad once told me about
a boy he served the Navy with
whose girlfriend ended things
across the sea
and over broadcast radio.
he took his broken heart
and then an axe
and turned them on the radio
destroying it
with Lizzie Borden zeal.
the totem needed to be killed
for taking on her voice
and ruining (he felt) his life
the box that stole his future wife
a boy he served the Navy with
whose girlfriend ended things
across the sea
and over broadcast radio.
he took his broken heart
and then an axe
and turned them on the radio
destroying it
with Lizzie Borden zeal.
the totem needed to be killed
for taking on her voice
and ruining (he felt) his life
the box that stole his future wife
#depression
#despair
#love #MentalHealth
#love #MentalHealth
109 reads
4 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
17th Oct 2024 12:54pm
17th Oct 2024 12:54pm
Victorian Sermon
The tranquil face of cruelty
behoves the devil as a mask.
Than that of domesticity,
there is no hate more intimate.
The girl who can't believe that love
need not be so conditional,
the boy who's long since lost
a need for love consensual...
These faces do not pulse
and burst with necrophilic pus.
They're often deeply false
with lines of youth, beauty.
You find the Devil in its voice,
in how it exercises choice.
behoves the devil as a mask.
Than that of domesticity,
there is no hate more intimate.
The girl who can't believe that love
need not be so conditional,
the boy who's long since lost
a need for love consensual...
These faces do not pulse
and burst with necrophilic pus.
They're often deeply false
with lines of youth, beauty.
You find the Devil in its voice,
in how it exercises choice.
#hate
#historical
#love #religion
#love #religion
117 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
16th Oct 2024 1:26am
16th Oct 2024 1:26am
The Spectral Window
I don’t believe in ghosts,
but once when I was just fifteen
I walked into an empty room
inside my mother’s flat,
a room that was large and empty
and filled with odds and ends,
an old round table here,
a clothes horse there…
and through the curtainless window
the moonlight shone and started me.
So it was nothing much at all,
but in that moment I did not
believe in ghosts and yet
was scared of them.
but once when I was just fifteen
I walked into an empty room
inside my mother’s flat,
a room that was large and empty
and filled with odds and ends,
an old round table here,
a clothes horse there…
and through the curtainless window
the moonlight shone and started me.
So it was nothing much at all,
but in that moment I did not
believe in ghosts and yet
was scared of them.
#childhood
#ghosts
#memories #mother
#memories #mother
129 reads
4 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
9th Oct 2024 12:10pm
9th Oct 2024 12:10pm
On the Path
The truth of the heart is that it all ends',
the voice of a sage came quietly.
Or was it your own thoughts, locked far within yourself,
the childish need to affect rebellion
against an unfair scheme of life where all that lives will die
without a resurrection soon to grace?
The barn is empty, lashed by wind, and swaddled in blackness.
You sit inside and I come looking for you there,
to sit beside you in the cold and talk astrology, science,
belief, and other silhouettes that dance on hay bales.
We are two stalks of straw...
the voice of a sage came quietly.
Or was it your own thoughts, locked far within yourself,
the childish need to affect rebellion
against an unfair scheme of life where all that lives will die
without a resurrection soon to grace?
The barn is empty, lashed by wind, and swaddled in blackness.
You sit inside and I come looking for you there,
to sit beside you in the cold and talk astrology, science,
belief, and other silhouettes that dance on hay bales.
We are two stalks of straw...
#death
#humankind
#LifeCycle #love
#LifeCycle #love
115 reads
2 Comments
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
7th Oct 2024 4:28pm
7th Oct 2024 4:28pm
Brick and Mortar
Houses are of brick and mortar. If there's evil, it's in someone's heart. I don't remember who said that, but it mostly holds true. I say mostly because sometimes the evil in someone's heart can leach into the brick-and-mortar. The house on Cromwell Row was like that. It was one of five uniform constructions backing onto farmer's fields, the opposite of what you would imagine when given the prompt "haunted house". There were no gables, no accidents of architecture turning upper windows into eyes, and it was only one floor, a bungalow, just like its mates.
My husband and I...
My husband and I...
#fiction
#ghosts
#horror #ShortStory
#horror #ShortStory
171 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
5th Oct 2024 11:38pm
5th Oct 2024 11:38pm
B-Movies
when they were shot on film
they had a poetry to them
the truly insane ones with acting so wooden
it leaves splinters
and lines unspeakable to where
they stay that way still when spoken
were nonetheless great swathes of light
first caught on frail celluloid
there was, in short, blood behind the eyes
not just vision but flesh
a sense that something had been made
even if it was just Puppet Master 5
now anyone can soak
a streaming site in digital schlock
and life and flesh and blood’s gone out of it
they had a poetry to them
the truly insane ones with acting so wooden
it leaves splinters
and lines unspeakable to where
they stay that way still when spoken
were nonetheless great swathes of light
first caught on frail celluloid
there was, in short, blood behind the eyes
not just vision but flesh
a sense that something had been made
even if it was just Puppet Master 5
now anyone can soak
a streaming site in digital schlock
and life and flesh and blood’s gone out of it
#art
#historical
#PopCulture #technology
#PopCulture #technology
94 reads
1 Comment
DARK POEM
Published
5th Oct 2024 4:44pm
5th Oct 2024 4:44pm
dancer in hell
the dancer held in aspic is released
and muscle memory occurs
to get her through a pirouette
surrounded by the loving damned
before the spotlight disappears
and with it all of Galilee
defined as a roadside bar
and then a blinding light so white
so void of dance and audience
and just a floating vanity
the glass in which she sees herself
crippled by thousands of crows’ feet
and muscle memory occurs
to get her through a pirouette
surrounded by the loving damned
before the spotlight disappears
and with it all of Galilee
defined as a roadside bar
and then a blinding light so white
so void of dance and audience
and just a floating vanity
the glass in which she sees herself
crippled by thousands of crows’ feet
#aging
#dance
#death #hell
#death #hell
181 reads
2 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
4th Oct 2024 11:26pm
4th Oct 2024 11:26pm
Horror Poet
one of my firsts was Sylvia Plath
just like sad college girls
the world over
but I knew what people meant
when they said
that her work was obsessed with death
preening, diseased, and cruel
and all I could say
was that I liked it that way
and liked that she went to places
uncouth for women poets of that time…
that if the masculine could be
masturbatory, grim, and raving at the swell
of past
so could the feminine…
and that she took the nursery rhyme
and moulded it to fit
the...
just like sad college girls
the world over
but I knew what people meant
when they said
that her work was obsessed with death
preening, diseased, and cruel
and all I could say
was that I liked it that way
and liked that she went to places
uncouth for women poets of that time…
that if the masculine could be
masturbatory, grim, and raving at the swell
of past
so could the feminine…
and that she took the nursery rhyme
and moulded it to fit
the...
#feminism
#historical
#MentalHealth #WritingPoetry
#MentalHealth #WritingPoetry
132 reads
3 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Casted_Runes (Mr Karswell)
