Tag: dVerse Poetics

Seasonal Ghosts

Fallen leaves, sudden colors surround our steps
this season of the encroaching frost, where breath
shivers surfeit with ghosts, phantasms of shade and shape
lingering on the outskirts of our gaze, entrapped
to swirl in gossamer guise of follies unguessed
flesh and blood whose course ran verdure green
but now, as the dry veined leaves, pose beleaguered
papery skinned revenants awaiting All Hallows’ Eve
as if deserving no more than our own fading grins.

note: Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem “The Revenant” should haunt every evocation of revenants. Check out this translation of the poem at Sublime Terror.

Lisa hosts Dverse's "Poetics 427: Mussenden’s Temple"
Write a poem (in any form) using the word "folly."
Check out all the responses at Mr. Linky.

Nightmare Ballad

Today’s prompt on dVerse Poetics, “You Want It Darker,” is courtesy of Lucy who asks us to “write a poem about the transient notion of life to death, or topics germane to the theme. With a twist.” The twist is to write a ballad that “will/can include dark, gothic themes and imagery . . . . It’s October and we’re looking for some dark poetry, publies.”

I’ve taken as inspiration a painting by Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński who once said, “What matters is what appears in your soul, not what your eyes see and what you can name.”

Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005)

Nightmare Ballad

between October’s mists
my ring on your finger
your fingers in her hair
my heart consumes fire

wonders casual causality
between your white-rowed teeth
her crimson, wet-bladed lips
crimes hallowed like wine

when the moon fell from the sky
on a common day of sepia-tints
the ground bled red
nightmares rode split tree trunks

into a necropolis of fears
where decayed hope
breeds madness
the food of the gods

where desires feign love
where mirrors that were eyes
open silently
bend inward
and scream

till I wake

For more on Zdzisław Beksiński's paintings, click here.
Click Mr. Linky for more poems and join in.