Scary Sonnet

Well, it’s that time of year again, so I’ve written a sinister sonnet for Halloween. Warning – those of a sensitive disposition, look away now!

The Summoning

Voices are chanting in the lamp-lit crypt
but this is no church, no Christian priest:
the words he reads, inscribed in arcane script
are meant to summon an infernal beast
to do his bidding, but it hungers for
a sacrifice. The innocents are led
to the stone altar, made to kneel, before
a flint blade flashes, turns from brown to red.
Their life, their blood is offered as a gift
and now the incantations sound anew.
That knife has sundered more than flesh: a rift
has opened between worlds – something comes through.
Even the priest is paralysed by fear.
He prostrates in submission: It is here.

_{pic: Keith Schengili-Roberts. Licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0}

Marble

Today I am delighted to post a guest poem from fellow Meltham Writer Jan Huntley. I’m always open to guest pieces – see this post for details: https://timwordsblog.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/visit-my-blog/

Marble

The gods smirked and the heavens cracked
Across ink black space now a darker hole
Along it bolts of lightning tracked
A blue sphere began its baptismal roll.
A jewel, a marble, dream of the dark
Spins, cools rolls in perfection formed
As the gods, excited by the game remark
On this planet born of ice but through creation warmed,
Will be a place to play our games
With smaller balls of a different hues
Will set human plans afire in flames
With a flick of a finger we’ll recline and view
A mighty mountain formed a perch
For many gods , to view as the marble cools.
Between fire, and ice we humans lurch
The gods, the players : we, the fools

National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day today! This evening I shall be at an open mic to celebrate the event at Hitchin Library, with other members of Poetry-ID. Why not come along, if you’re in the area? 7-10pm, £2 on the door. Refreshments available.

Well, I have to share a poem, today of all days. This one more or less fits the National Poetry Day theme of Refuge, so I’ll be reading it tonight. I’ll also read a couple of poems from the recent Poetry-ID collection, The Songs Don’t Sing Themselves.

The House Plant

She keeps it in the living room
next to the fire, quite safe from rain
or raucous winds and screened by curtains
from the uninvited sun; alive
but not allowed to grow.

For Alice too,
there was to be no flowering.
The seed of her was sown in stormy times:
the sky was somewhere bombs might fall from;
hostile sea too perilous to cross.

The world was never, as for some of us,
an orchard bulging with ripe fruit.
Her life’s work was the carving out
from it of some small place of calm
for her and those she loved.

True to that goal she rejects
and fears the Outside still. She cowers
in her carapace of cardigans;
the stillness of this safe,
constricted space a kind of victory. 

It did not ask to be protected.
In its sheltered spot, the leaves grow smaller,
folding in upon themselves.
‘Must be the draught,’ she said. I disagreed.
‘Let’s put it in the sun for once, before it dies.’