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

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

hysteria

fie, oh fie for shame
god neglects to dry the tears
of fae, fie for shame

fain would fae grow tall
with all that dotage entail
when time doth reap all
the envigored life assail
turneth youth to rufous grail

fie, oh fie for shame
that void would swallow all tears
of fae, fie we fall

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

the silver tongue choir

don’t consider every poet a messiah
but, rather, a pretty sounding liar
the snivelling, hysterical jeremiah
was one such example

don’t consider every poet a liar
but, rather, a pathetic pariah
who’ll burn in the almighty’s holy fire
fuelled by his urine sample

don’t consider every poet a pariah
but, rather, a copious arse licking choir
worshipping elites with sexual desire
thirty pieces of silver will be ample

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024