Ω Gothic Postcard Ω

Dear diabolic debutante / Spawn of the unfathomable abyss of blackness / Daughter of dreadful dead desire / Black-shrouded sinister sister of celestial gloom before whose imperious gaze the heavens fall silent / Whip-lash girl-child of the graves whose pallid visage kindles the myriad infernal fires / Autocratic vampiress of lunar doom whose winding-cloth enfolds the thousand horrors of blood-drenched nightmare / Thou that wanderest the cypress-crested hills of funereal necropolises / Whose icy glance cracks the ungraven tombstones of utter desolation / Empress of night and madness / Who stalks the locked and shadowed hallways of unhallowed thought / Whose burial-boat glides the still waters over Lethe’s silent depths to the unglimpsed isle of eternal mourning / Whose parapets tower above the fiefdoms of quotidian banality / Whose flying buttresses overlook the Stygian waters of the forgotten drowned denizens of damnation / Whose unshackled dungeons open to worlds of regal splendor / Whose spires pierce dark skies where oblivion buries the ruined cities of revelry under the drifting clouds of leaden time / Oh maiden of melancholic alchemy whose petrified passions transmute base metal into pure gold…

May the gibbous moon of equinox shine its baleful eye upon you; may you tread in sacramental calm the winding starlit paths of somnolent cemeteries; may my unmixed metaphors unveil in delirium their parabolic mysteries before the smoldering altar of your uninterpretable allegory; may the favor of your scorn forever lay me out, embalmed, undead, on the cold stone of merciless reality. Behold: in cryptic script of spectral apparition, in tracery of coded illumination, amidst the dawning rays of torment I write thine unknown name on the threshold of daylight. And from within the mortared wall of self I speak forth from my sepulcher the Sibylline utterance, unsought, unheard, undreamt:

JUST WANTED TO SAY ‘HI’ !!!

IMAGE: Circe offers the cup to Ulysses, Waterhouse

I brought out a favorite from the crypts in order to respond to today’s prompt:

PROMPT 13: write a poem about something mysterious and spooky!
Your poem could be about something that is mysterious and spooky
in a bad way (like a witch), or mysterious and spooky in a good way
Or just the everyday, mysterious, spooky quality of being alive.

Well-Whetted Couplets

 

My old dull knife; I love that blade.
Behold her blunted self portrayed:
She shines, yet cannot make her point
Unsheathed, she’ll only disappoint.

Her edge, that dares to draw no blood
When cold, shall carve no willing wood;
Well-warmed, she’ll lose the fight to butter . . .
Despite her glitter, she’s no cutter.

A useless tool. There is none worse.
I’ll sharpen her—and then, my verse.

 

PROMPT #12:
write a poem about a dull thing that you own, and why and how you love it.

 

Arriving Home

Exiles from a dysfunctional global pipe-dream
of borderless corporate matriarchies,
multi-kulti nonsense and data-driven diversity
where virtue-signaling despots ruled
and those so confused they didn’t know their own gender
competed for victim-status as they shrieked,
where rainbow torches on the filthy walls
smoldered with toxic smoke
barely illuminating the fragments
of computer carcasses we had to step over,
we fled the algorithmic oppression
of technocrats
to found a pure republic, based on poetry, goodwill and faith in God.

We emerged from the labyrinthine caverns and malodorous tunnels
into the light right outside the cave:

Clear, strong patriarchal light

purifying the fresh air.

We breathe deeply.

Once I saw some Vikings
sail the sea looking for Diet Coke
only to find angry gulls and mothers
squawking in parking lots
as the dust of the gentle hills disappeared
down the unpaved road
of rolling Scandinavian seas.

I was emotionally engaged once . . .
but she was a neurotic feminist poet, so I broke it off
and moved to Kekistan where (thanks be to Kek)
I married my THREE Kekistani brides:

PROMPT #11:

Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually?
Maybe you are from Vikings and the sea and diet coke and angry gulls in parking lots.
Maybe you are from gentle hills and angry mothers
and dust disappearing down an unpaved road.
And having come from there, where are you now?