pariah hymne

here we go again
peering over the edge of time
vultures dancing in the air
above the slain ones in the grime
we’d trodden with the angels
but then they’d gone and left us behind
absconding on hoverboards
no mortal could keep pace with their kind

“don’t trust the bastards!”
so say we all, “beware them all!”
celestial traffic, superlunary scrawl
stay hungry, stay foolish
all barefoot and tall at the mafficking mall
“we’ll jive! we’ll survive!” so say we all!

so, we raise our hands
in the sign of the devil’s antlers
we hope he’ll give us a lift
us ethereal gallivanters
instead, we get struck down
by the balls of his carronade banter
but we’re used to being ditched
crumpled, we embrace a new mantra

“don’t trust the bastards!”
so say we all, “beware them all!”
celestial traffic, superlunary scrawl
stay hungry, stay foolish
all barefoot and tall at the mafficking mall
“we’ll jive! we’ll survive!” so say we all!

here goes time again
peering over the edge of us
worms lancing through the grime
‘neath the spent casings and arquebus
leaving angels and demons behind
we sink bayonets with gravitas
into the ground, say with resolve
“we’ll abide in this temporal annulus”

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2019

how to explain life to a live girl

they walk around the room cuddling a dead hare
smearing the floor with stale syrupy gold
they cry out loud that awakening is here
exactly as beuys has foretold

i lie on the floor trying not to sleep
but the damned gold flashes before my eyes
here i balance over the greasy steep
falling through the creaky rickety skies

and i see in my dream how a huge dead hare
cuddles me to its soft warm belly
runs its paws over my messy hair
treats me to marmite and orange jelly

the hare whispers of shoes and sealing wax
of shooting stars over the seashore
that a worldview’s a matter of parallax
…i wake up to the sound of a slammed door

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2019

Open-Source Poetry Four #2

All Hallows’ Eve has come and gone for another year, leaving behind it a trail of pumpkin seeds and M&Ms. Dear Reader, did you wear a costume this year? We did! Tati was a tentacled Cthulhu kitty, and Tony preferred to… well, cosplay as a plate of pumpkin mash. As usual.

But, alas, good things never last. All the skeletons have been shoved back into their closets, and all the ghosts have been brought to bay with proton energy streams. Now it’s time to work! That’s right, we’re serving up another slice of communal poetry for you to chew over and add lines to. Are you up to the challenge? If your answer is a demonic, guttural yes, then read on:

1) You see that bit of poetry down there? That’s what we’d like your help with. All you need do is submit your own line for our consideration.
2) If we like your line the best, we’ll add it to the poem, then we’ll publish said poem in a follow-up post.
3) What happens then? Well, you get angry if you’re among the unfortunate many whose line wasn’t chosen, and you vow to submit another one that will most certainly blow us away with its awesome astoundingness!
4) And so the whole process of submission and rejection is repeated until we finally have a horrifying new masterpiece!

So, yeah, that’s it! Now it’s your turn to sweat over that next perfect line. Meanwhile, Tati, Tony and Tomas Mankus will chill out with a well earned bag of trick-or-treating sweets… oh, and a cup of tea. Mmm… sacrilegious!

Вензель

hm, what should I draw?
maybe a hairy monster with a furry claw
or a demon crow that sticks in the craw
or a huge bloodstained saw

Вензель_нижний

by TETIANA ALEKSINA, TONY SINGLE & TOMAS MANKUS
© All rights reserved 2019

GUEST POST // Viaticum 3 – Wooden hands by Chris Nelson

Knotted fingers work their skill
Sculpting nature’s giants,
As passion flows through hands
Designed to make things new.
Hematic flow from skin to grain
Rekindles life anew,
This touch like cryptesthesia
Animation from the dead.
And now you try to steal this love
To touch another’s flesh,
To breathe life within a kiss
And raise an amaranthine army.
These hands show dried and lifeless
Now splintered from mis-use,
Cut from weeping saplings
And drowned in blood of men.

by CHRIS NELSON
© All rights reserved 2000-2019

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Halloween by Madison Julius Cawein

It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe’en,
Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,
That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,
And heard her still step on the ghost-haunted air.

It was last Hallowe’en in the glimmer and swoon
Of mist and of moonlight that thickened and thinned,
That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,
And hair, like a raven, blown wild in the wind.

It was last Hallowe’en where starlight and dew
Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,
That she led me with looks of a love that I knew,
And lured with the voice of a heart-buried grief.

It was last Hallowe’en in the forest of dreams,
Where trees are eidolons and shadows have eyes,
That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,
And heard, like the leaf-lisp, her tears and her sighs.

It was last Hallowe’en, the haunted, the dread,
In the wind-tattered wood by the storm-twisted pine,
That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,
And clasped her a moment and dreamed she was mine.

by MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN (1865-1914)
Public Domain Poetry