I am not the granddaughter of the witches you couldn’t burn.
I am not the blood of their blood or any of that suburban white witch bullshit.
I am Witch because the title is mine to claim by right:
by right of my rage
by right of my resistance
by right of my existence in a world
that threatens to crush everything I love under the boot heel of assimilation.
You want Burning Times?
I’ll show you some motherfucking Burning Times.
by ONLYFRAGMENTS
© All rights reserved 2020
all trees are grey in the dark
but cats? they are different!
their eyes glow in any grove
their ears flick to disquiet
their tails can tell you a story
of a recipe of cheshire pudding
which of course you’ll have to make
and offer humbly up to them
by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021
i don’t think i’d ever have been old enough
to be the equal of you in our younger days
to the fullness of all our summers i lived
i know you have tried to remember them all
and of course we could never have been forever
here merely for the term of our natural lives
the naïve hope was to simply not die
how’s not to reason why
for as long as my shadow’s here at your side
your regret will be a coma of dreaming
and that blanket of night will smother you
so that all you’ll feel is the pain of now
love is a beautiful hideous thing
i miss you my dear, and thank you for trying
if we could we’d kick the whole damn sky in
i’m nowhere forever and you’re haunted more
grief is a beautiful hideous thing
miss you my dear, and screw me for dying
but tomorrow things will work out somehow
you’ll smile again in the reeds at morningside
we thought we held all the keys didn’t we
to lock all the doors to mutual oblivion
but no matter how far and vain you wander
in this hall of echoes you’ll never find me
and of course you remain to remember now
how we railed at the stalking geist of death
though i wish i had not crumbled, dear
you should not yearn to have died with me
and you’re old enough now to be scared of forgetting
but the end, as we’ve seen, is a broad church
and the road there is an arduous song
so for now be resigned to the sunshine my dear (i won’t mind)
love is a beautiful hideous thing
miss you my dear, and screw me for flying
if we could we’d kick the whole damn sky in
i’m nowhere forever and joy will return
grief is a beautiful hideous thing
i miss you my dear, and thank you for crying
but tomorrow things will work out somehow
you’ll smile again in the sunshine at morningside
by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021
She was half Lady and half cat–
What is so wonderful in that?
Half of our lady friends (so say
The other half) are Cats to-day.
In Egypt she made quite a stir,
They carved huge Images of her.
Riddles she asked of all she met
And all who answered wrong, she ate.
When Oedipus her riddle solved
The minx–I mean the Sphinx–dissolved
In tears. What is there, when one thinks,
So wonderful about the Sphinx?
by OLIVER HERFORD (1863-1935)
Public Domain Poetry
poetry is cold and empty like outer space
like voracious cronus who devours his own sons
no matter how many verses you’ve thrown to the gorge
it burps out, calling for more
poetry is cold and empty like outer space
there are always moons where no foot may tread
no matter how loud you’ve shouted to the craters
it echoes out, calling for more
poetry is cold and empty like outer space
stellar wind drives tumbleweeds through the milky way
no matter how far you’ve overstepped the bounds
it erases out, calling for more
by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2021
unbolt me 