squamating games

i don’t wanna agree just to keep the peace
don’t gotta force myself to bend to your crease
it would be better for you to desist & cease
so i’m no longer subject to your caprice

just ‘cos i’m a lady
don’t make you my superhero
just a supervillain

in other words, i would like you to sod off
before this turns into a lifelong stand-off
something ’bout your face really puts me off
like it’s not your face but some creepy knock off

please don’t call me baby
or i’ll paint the goddam walls
with your guts vermillion

i suspect you’re a lizard wearing human skin
lemme press this shotgun ‘neath your weak chin
aerate that area with some ballistic spin
get a three-pointer, dunk your head in a bin

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

nigredo moth song

you are the clinging taken flight
ev’ry night at behest of gaslight
a shadow’s veil o’er pale lea
froing ev’ry where with ev’ry care
a full-wing’d catastrophe

expell’d from skeet cocoon
& still not yet fully bloom’d
unaliv’d to breathe again
into hallow’d dustings of lung & wing

the flame, they say, casts a treacherous spell
but you’ll scudder through like you always do
prevail somehow, wee gossamer soul

you are the feelings all at once
all fronts abandoned to the hunt
to dire thunder afore the dawn
ev’ry care to ev’ry prayer
to ev’ry thready need to mourn

but dusk can ne’er negate joy
tho’ you feel not yet fully bouy’d
forsake all the haggl’d horrow
in begotten age of thrum & wing

the flame, they say, casts a treacherous spell
but you’ll scudder through like you always do
prevail somehow, wee gossamer soul

the tide does heap perilous weight
its freight upon you a cragging hate
dragging the air from your charcoal frame
ev’ry prayer scries ev’ry where
hying too close to dark waters again

traject’ries erratic as night is long
are you feeling too much all o’er again
will you be a conclusion forgone
you surely cannot be the only one

the flame, they say, casts a treacherous spell
but you’ll scudder through like you always do
prevail somehow, wee gossamer soul

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025

Tumblevision #30

Poppie’s delights!

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025

TATI’s AND TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Yesterdays by Abram Joseph Ryan

Gone! and they return no more,
But they leave a light in the heart;
The murmur of waves that kiss a shore
Will never, I know, depart.

Gone! yet with us still they stay,
And their memories throb through life;
The music that hushes or stirs to-day,
Is toned by their calm or strife.

Gone! and yet they never go!
We kneel at the shrine of time:
‘Tis a mystery no man may know,
Nor tell in a poet’s rhyme.

by ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN (1839-1886)
Public Domain Poetry

GUEST POST // Talking in Code by Whitecatgrove

Lay down, lay down, antlers fallen from
the crown. A king falls, a doe dies, and wise
the mouse who makes his house in the moss!
O the cost of this solitary life —
paid out in blood and mountaintops, the coin
of misunderstandings. The warbler
cannot understand the mockingbird’s
almost-speech. I’m tired. I’m talking in code.
The deer’s wild heart beats its mighty last.
This too shall pass. The vultures crack the bones.

by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2025