Submissions by The_Silly_Sibyl (Tommy or Tuppence)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
FICTIONAL PROSE
Published
15th Jan 2021 5:30pm
15th Jan 2021 5:30pm
The Case of the Calamitous Currency
a detective story
The MP and his wife were guided up the stairs of the hotel by a young Italian porter. He informed them that they were too late for lunch but if they wished a platter of cold sandwiches could be sent up.
The MP grumbled that the service in Europe is no better than in Torquay, and normally his wife would have apologised for this, only she saw that the young man did not speak English well enough to discern the dialectic mumblings of a gruff Yorkshireman whose pipe was always stuck in his mouth.
The suite they were shown to was exquisite,...
The MP and his wife were guided up the stairs of the hotel by a young Italian porter. He informed them that they were too late for lunch but if they wished a platter of cold sandwiches could be sent up.
The MP grumbled that the service in Europe is no better than in Torquay, and normally his wife would have apologised for this, only she saw that the young man did not speak English well enough to discern the dialectic mumblings of a gruff Yorkshireman whose pipe was always stuck in his mouth.
The suite they were shown to was exquisite,...
#ShortStory
20 reads
2 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
15th Jan 2021 9:51am
15th Jan 2021 9:51am
Courtyard (20 words challenge)
1
The window by my room
looks at a courtyard,
fourteen feet down to the ground.
A cave of predators, nightly.
2
Stop outside the cave.
Look down, between the cars.
No markers of the grave.
Fears are based on scars.
3
by morning it’s
not sinister
just pale in
the grim
glaucoma light
the right angle
between houses
used for garages
The window by my room
looks at a courtyard,
fourteen feet down to the ground.
A cave of predators, nightly.
2
Stop outside the cave.
Look down, between the cars.
No markers of the grave.
Fears are based on scars.
3
by morning it’s
not sinister
just pale in
the grim
glaucoma light
the right angle
between houses
used for garages
#StreamOfConsciousness
19 reads
2 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
10th Jan 2021 4:37pm
10th Jan 2021 4:37pm
Reading the Cards
You've been reading the cards, haven't you?" - Touch of Evil
A single hand shuffles
and deals your hand,
fast but one by one.
The other hand
is decked with rings
and taps an ugly sarabande.
Moon through the open slit
on grass and velvet tablecloth.
You cannot see the gipsy's face
but she can see your face,
future, and past.
The past's a cityscape.
Between one darkness and its mate
you grace her palm with currency
and try to leave the cityscape.
A world is glimpsed in shards. ...
A single hand shuffles
and deals your hand,
fast but one by one.
The other hand
is decked with rings
and taps an ugly sarabande.
Moon through the open slit
on grass and velvet tablecloth.
You cannot see the gipsy's face
but she can see your face,
future, and past.
The past's a cityscape.
Between one darkness and its mate
you grace her palm with currency
and try to leave the cityscape.
A world is glimpsed in shards. ...
#fate
35 reads
11 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
10th Jan 2021 11:39am
10th Jan 2021 11:39am
Grass and Stone and Stars, a poem in three forms
Sonnet
The grass between my toes,
the stars above my head.
These vanish as the stone asserts itself,
and I am left without an imp, or elf,
or any thing they said I owned,
to which I took myself, and honed
the spells unheard by Christian dead.
A chair, they said, was mine at secret shows.
They saw me in the woods,
in conversation with
a local wife at work with axe and rope.
They saw me kiss her on the mouth, a hope
between us like Sodom:
a stain on all of Christendom.
Triolet
...
The grass between my toes,
the stars above my head.
These vanish as the stone asserts itself,
and I am left without an imp, or elf,
or any thing they said I owned,
to which I took myself, and honed
the spells unheard by Christian dead.
A chair, they said, was mine at secret shows.
They saw me in the woods,
in conversation with
a local wife at work with axe and rope.
They saw me kiss her on the mouth, a hope
between us like Sodom:
a stain on all of Christendom.
Triolet
...
#witches
27 reads
5 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
8th Jan 2021 5:19pm
8th Jan 2021 5:19pm
The Deferred Vacancy
The art of writing well, is the art of saying nothing elaborately. - Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves
a nihilist's sermon
The Old Creator's hand is in
supposedly all things.
All some can see is thick or thin
volumes, a crow that sings.
A church that closes on the dusk
and shelters from the night.
The priestly crow shakes off his musk
and beds down, out of sight.
The volumes have been cracked open.
The crow's anthems have all been heard.
But life is death briefly broken,
a vacancy deferred.
...
a nihilist's sermon
The Old Creator's hand is in
supposedly all things.
All some can see is thick or thin
volumes, a crow that sings.
A church that closes on the dusk
and shelters from the night.
The priestly crow shakes off his musk
and beds down, out of sight.
The volumes have been cracked open.
The crow's anthems have all been heard.
But life is death briefly broken,
a vacancy deferred.
...
#atheism
27 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
8th Jan 2021 6:44am
8th Jan 2021 6:44am
Platonic Love Poem
sometimes you think you’ve known someone
and give to them your kindliness
- a little wooden clown
with permanent smile -
but look again to see
they’ve taken
and they’ve stamped on it
the lesson being this:
that friends can break your heart
just as lovers do
the little clown with broken plywood legs
beneath rainbow trousers
and made-up caved-in face
with pieces of smile
stuck to the sole of a shoe
and give to them your kindliness
- a little wooden clown
with permanent smile -
but look again to see
they’ve taken
and they’ve stamped on it
the lesson being this:
that friends can break your heart
just as lovers do
the little clown with broken plywood legs
beneath rainbow trousers
and made-up caved-in face
with pieces of smile
stuck to the sole of a shoe
#heartbroken
31 reads
5 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
7th Jan 2021 9:28pm
7th Jan 2021 9:28pm
Treachery
The name of treachery is Blood.
The senators beneath their desks,
cowering like schoolchildren
from the atomic bomb,
as men and women painted, fierce, throng
the offices of law.
And leading them from those same offices,
Blood stands and licks his hands, and grins,
his eyes not evil but vacant
of any moral sense, or sense at all.
The Devil did not murder you.
You were murdered by The Fool.
The senators beneath their desks,
cowering like schoolchildren
from the atomic bomb,
as men and women painted, fierce, throng
the offices of law.
And leading them from those same offices,
Blood stands and licks his hands, and grins,
his eyes not evil but vacant
of any moral sense, or sense at all.
The Devil did not murder you.
You were murdered by The Fool.
#politics
29 reads
0 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
6th Jan 2021 3:28am
6th Jan 2021 3:28am
Shame
he held me by the throat
up near the glass
from which the clerk looked
but did not see
me or he
in our grim hug
that cold night with the gas pumps close
at least I hope he did not see
though in truth his head
was turned as if to not see
by choice
‘scared, no doubt’ said the cop
I raised this to
‘men ain’t knights these days’
he winked and I felt sick
he did see though
once the man had had my bag
and torn the left side
of my blouse and bra
to show the breast...
up near the glass
from which the clerk looked
but did not see
me or he
in our grim hug
that cold night with the gas pumps close
at least I hope he did not see
though in truth his head
was turned as if to not see
by choice
‘scared, no doubt’ said the cop
I raised this to
‘men ain’t knights these days’
he winked and I felt sick
he did see though
once the man had had my bag
and torn the left side
of my blouse and bra
to show the breast...
#shame
32 reads
7 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
5th Jan 2021 10:54pm
5th Jan 2021 10:54pm
The House in the Night
I dreamt of a world in pitch.
air churning in the fields
and between the trees. What yields
you would not wish to know,
traps in the forest floor
and assailants concealed
behind trees. The light revealed
is charming, then, more so than magic,
or science. I walked towards it in the dream
and saw a single house of elegant design,
a party in the living room,
the room itself living. A music floats
like smoke from a newly baked pie
towards a cartoon cat’s nostrils.
When I reach the door
I’m admitted, cannot believe
my...
air churning in the fields
and between the trees. What yields
you would not wish to know,
traps in the forest floor
and assailants concealed
behind trees. The light revealed
is charming, then, more so than magic,
or science. I walked towards it in the dream
and saw a single house of elegant design,
a party in the living room,
the room itself living. A music floats
like smoke from a newly baked pie
towards a cartoon cat’s nostrils.
When I reach the door
I’m admitted, cannot believe
my...
#heaven
33 reads
5 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
2nd Jan 2021 5:11pm
2nd Jan 2021 5:11pm
God’s Arrow
But God will shoot at them with an arrow;
Suddenly they will be wounded. - Psalm 64
I am thirty this July.
Some thing inside me flattens out
and scents the humours as they churn
just like a dryer sheet.
I’m not, nor will I ever be, fully sane
and sound. But I can greet
the Furies like a friend
who will not bear his throat
to harridans, at least.
I try to say what Kings would at a feast.
That on the hill the heathen sits
and will arrive with sword and bow,
but just like you he eats and shits,
and...
Suddenly they will be wounded. - Psalm 64
I am thirty this July.
Some thing inside me flattens out
and scents the humours as they churn
just like a dryer sheet.
I’m not, nor will I ever be, fully sane
and sound. But I can greet
the Furies like a friend
who will not bear his throat
to harridans, at least.
I try to say what Kings would at a feast.
That on the hill the heathen sits
and will arrive with sword and bow,
but just like you he eats and shits,
and...
#aging
33 reads
12 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
31st Dec 2020 10:11pm
31st Dec 2020 10:11pm
Random fragment (for the NoPoo thread)
The great and terrible circus
rattles on from town to town
and in its freak show lives us two,
lovemaking in dirt.
rattles on from town to town
and in its freak show lives us two,
lovemaking in dirt.
#lover
34 reads
7 Comments
DARK POEM
Published
31st Dec 2020 1:09pm
31st Dec 2020 1:09pm
Eulogy for a Traitor
George Blake (1922 to December 26th, 2020) was a spy with Britain's secret intelligence, who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He has been described as having caused more deaths of British spies than any other "traitor" of the period. (He estimated his death tally at about 400.) He was exposed, served a brief period in a British jail, escaped, and fled to Russia, where he spent the rest of his life.
I couldn't dig up all the guilt
(you no doubt didn't feel),
not because of loyalty
to Queen and country, policy,
nor any dull, bladed concept we used ...
I couldn't dig up all the guilt
(you no doubt didn't feel),
not because of loyalty
to Queen and country, policy,
nor any dull, bladed concept we used ...
#suffering
25 reads
6 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by The_Silly_Sibyl (Tommy or Tuppence)
