Are my eyes just fooling me again
Or is my time Finaly up
Is this a siege on my own head
Or revenge from far and wide  
It seems so clear
But yet so far
The panic setting in
I was warned
But not enough
This is the time for fear

And as I stare below me
Crown tilted low upon my head
I could swear the forest's walking
Full of loathing, life and hate  

It's pace is quickly speeding up approaching  Dunsinane
Now what to do with my own throne
The battles lost
The battles won  

And The branches click and whisper
As I look down In fear  
But what choice do I have now
These woods will make the end

Tonight good Duncan, friend and guest
This dagger shall pass through thy breast
I shall be king as was the prophecy and belief
Told by the hags upon the heath

Unsexed like them, my Lady chides me still
For my kindness and uncertain will
Even as my dagger drips once more
And blood from noble Banquo stains the floor

Now in blood so far I'm steeped
Only can I wade more deep

But this horizon leads no longer to infinity
Steadily it closes in on me
Slow but marching all the same
Toward the hill at Dunsinane

And though those warning words I scorned
Not all men are of woman born
Thus proves the prophesy no lie
Live by the sword and therefore by it die

With every resistance,
remember –
how everything was choked
back into your mouth
when you were a baby bird
and the barricades
were not yet burned.

When you,
with aching gaze
watch the Joan of Arc torches
purge their way
up the winding acres
of stolen wood;
call yourself to Dunsinane
and wait there.

***** up your own feathers
and try to fly –
strip yourself of ash;
pretend that your fragility
is a stepping stone
to becoming a phoenix.

Inhale smoke
and watch the revolution
burn beneath your broken body,
your flightless bones
crushed to mothers’ milk,
countless choking coughs
coming up; down again.

Sing;
drown out the inevitable,
and choke;
with beautiful sounds
of death drawing acid
up your cartilage;
revolutionaries flee
the barricades, the fire,
whilst you beg
for what you have lost
to be choked back into you again.

Ignorance filters through the air likened to a plague
as the screens fill the silence
with plasticized glowing.

What adventures are we missing?
Ivanhoe, Dunsinane, Middle Earth?

Between the pages of our very busy lives, we miss
the written out thought processes that inquire
after why exactly we are so hellbent on
radiating our only pair of eyes out of our skulls
with the futile use of nonrenewable energy.

How is it that something so natural, so ******
between the lines of our genetic makeup
can be filtered out all within the means
of a filtered lense and a shining
artificial light?

I digress.

you give me hope that there’s a god up there;
strings of fate sewn to hold us together.
long nights, car rides, loud fights, and tangled hair,
losing ourselves always and forever.
cursorial hearts destined for failure,
fueling other’s love with tales of our own.
time, width, or length is not any measure;
held together with the cord of the phone.
irony always was my favorite part:
"fear not until wood comes to dunsinane",
only as if the castle was my heart,
and the forest was the sound of your name.
it is crazy that even after days
the thoughts of you never do seem to change.

A Trojan horse. As Cleopatra in a carpet
Enters hidden on a breath
Incubus; droplet alien drawn in,
sets about its work; brooding job to do.

Awaken a little stiff, sweat and grog
A scratchy throat; a swollen lymph
Shower power, rinse and coffee makes well.
No. Twas not to be this false alarm, I’d grabbed.

Working fast now, growing, flooding
like snow melt hitting parched desert.
Seeping into cracks; changing blood-scapes.
Reprographic virus; dissociative – to thrive.

A false pardon was granted this morning
Cruel deception, such as played on Nick Bottom
teased mind into belief; a surge of relief,
Just early morning rust; blow away sleep dust.

I am sick of it now, the sickness; the bug.
My alien visitors; my too close encounter
making things smell wrong – like vinegar
and my nose pop as each side turns to unblock.

As big screen drama – epic plays out in my mind.
The white cells; the soldiers wiping out alien-kind
Dualling MacDuff and MacBeth in Dunsinane cell
Waging battle within me; my man-flu living hell.

©pofacedpoetry Billy Reynard-Bowness (2018) all right’s reserved

Act 5; scene 3

You shuffled off your mortal coil
at the wrong **** time.
The  denouement Is not here yet.  
Your death left
footprints into ,Dunsinane with
your Lady,  Me.

We had plans and schemes.
We didn't finish the play.
Dunsinane was ours. Your
birthday of will.

The rescue was sold out.  You
we're a hit.  The Scottish play
was untroubled. Your crown
cleaned.  You stumbled into
the play's last act.

That I must go on alone out of this
creaking pasture, this mudhole,
to be traversed without you
is a remarkable lapse in your
Ordinary

My hands hurt for the rubbing
of them.  I am alive because
you aborted the play.

Return to me. I have paid
Dearly

for this ticket that was

meant for two.


Caroline Shank
5.10.2023

Me and my beret
oh so longed
for the scent of her mane,
as the King for his Queen
atop the Dunsinane.
Disappearance of the scent
from the beret,
how hastily it went,
on your departure's day.
The return is imminent,
with one of your own
resting on your mane,
all the days I yearned
must not go in vain.

Chaos in the chambers
echoing all over dunsinane,
the lady screams
insane and inane,
thence I flee to the forest
to lay still on the grass,
where the nightingale sings
under the moon for hours,
the lady and her raven,
they all keep mum
in this little haven.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      Here May You See the Tyrant

                     And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
                     We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
                     Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
                    “Here may you see the tyrant.”

                                        -Macbeth V.viii.28-31

Once upon a time he strutted across the stage
Peering into a cauldron presented to him
And stirring it about for a viler taste
Soul-sickness for sale from a poisoned chalice

But now he lurks in his dime-store Dunsinane
Conjuring magic baubles that do not exist
Comic-book ikons of himself for sale
To sucker the intellectually innocent

He cannot admit that his life was a lie
A non-fungible token to its end