"writhen" poems
Sweet Love,— but oh! most dread Desire of Love
Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
I’ the other s gaze, even as in his whose wand
Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann’d
The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.
Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
Made moan: ‘Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,
Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,
Life’s iron heart, even Love’s Fatality.’
1.8k
As with varnish red and glistening
Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid;
Raised, he settled stiffly sideways:
You could see his hurts were spinal.
He had fallen from an engine,
And been dragged along the metals.
It was hopeless, and they knew it;
So they covered him, and left him.
As he lay, by fits half sentient,
Inarticulately moaning,
With his stockinged soles protruded
Stark and awkward from the blankets,
To his bed there came a woman,
Stood and looked and sighed a little,
And departed without speaking,
As himself a few hours after.
I was told it was his sweetheart.
They were on the eve of marriage.
She was quiet as a statue,
But her lip was grey and writhen.
1.4k
I saw him there under the
treeroots lurking
It was dark thereunder, but he
beckoned darker
*Still your rotting mouth
Shut your eldritch eyes,
or everywhere you'll see him*
I saw him by night in
my window screaming
He had his owlface on
with eyes like
nectar-filled lamps
*Turn away your brittle body
Draw the covers to your chin
and bear the beak in mind*
I saw him on Sunday
in the churchyard digging
He laid the bones of my Father
in the wet wormsoil
for marrow cracked and clean
*Stand still your writhen legs
You cast a shadow over him,
and he reaches up towards it*
I saw him on the strand
in my lover's face seething
He took my lips in his
and breathed into me
her still beating embers
I walked the path back alone,
full of ash
I went to my knees at the altar
and tried to *****
I saw him in the steepled tower
by me standing
He opened his mouth
and whispered the words
I craved to hear
I stood over their graves
and cast no shadow
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 9:31 PM UTC
Do not be saddened by our sullied and blackened shores.
Do not forsake your dream, for the tocsin will always ring
for those unmindful of origin,
who bear convenient constructs, writhen mores,
all weighed by the dunnage of fear.
Or worse.
Strive, persist, and wait and wait and wait
until voices rise and the pendulum descends.
For the lady still shines, clear-eyed and steadfast.
She still wants you, still needs you.
Your soul, your yearning heart.
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 6:47 PM UTC
I wandered for a moment, surrounded by the white tunnel
In which I smelt the metallic tang from stainless steel
Travelling in the open air.
Glancing, I saw the disarray: nurses dashing in assistance, paramedics charging through the gaping doors with emergency cases
And doctors immersed in the plight to save lives.
I slid a door open,
Discovering an image so brief and profound,
A man, varnished with red, ached as it
Dripped through his hair -
Hesitantly, he settled sideways,
You could see his hurts were spinal.
He had fallen from an engine,
Dragged along the grating metals,
And as he lay, half sentient -
To his bed came a woman,
Who stood and sighed,
Her lips were writhen
As the sun had risen.
How desolate it was,
As she lied near the thundering waterfall of his heart,
Only to realise,
They were on the eve of their marriage.
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 1:15 PM UTC
From the pellucid
night sky,
a waning half-moon
spills frozen light
on writhen branches
of forlorn trees.
Two owls
hoot conversation.
A distant coyote
attempts to join in.
I am the amanuensis
of early morning:
if I do not
write this down,
no one will know;
this useless,
frigid beauty
will disappear
unnoticed
with the dawn.
- mce
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 5:44 PM UTC
my bus draws in a shudder down the chine
of tarmac dusk; the heavens not quite mine,
sole slick of oil beneath a slant of bane.
we pass late souls, their windows’ chasmal wounds,
mongrels lie limp in lawns that no one prunes,
and gardens taint in hiding, piled in vain.
the mounds give way behind their sunken name,
worn to bone, yet stripped of earned acclaim,
they bend like oaths soon shattered by the dawn.
their bark was not quite mine, though flesh i’d come to know;
but woods are nonsense wrapped in autumn’s glow,
lone pyrrhic den that holds no lasting mourn.
my face bursts into shards without a frame,
my eyes and veins are ichor’s vile flame,
the fire not quite mine; it climbs a colder spire.
once saccharine and syrup tight as lace,
i kissed the charm, then drifted into space,
and yet rue looped itself around a wire.
she spoke in sore orts of scripture that night,
her verses saintly writhen out of the light,
wry sultry keen she wore beneath her skin.
she faded soon, as fever always goes;
i kept her spikes in jars, where sorrow grows,
bittersweet ire, not quite mine, burning in.
the driver hums beneath a simmering pall,
a woman knits her rosary’s funeral call,
the beads tightening a hoop around her breath.
a child bleeds cherry from a sinful shed,
blasphemy clings close, like blood to the head,
a carcass, not quite mine, trails close to death.
i glean spent hours from dusk’s malicious shrine,
seek vestiges where aching seasons twine,
and in their still, catch breathlessly, a rhyme.
what breaks behind remains in salt and brine,
all not quite mine, yet wholly mine, this time.
Jun 30, 2025
Jun 30, 2025 at 7:16 PM UTC