"yowled" poems
We endeavor to construct boxes and file folders
This life being ****** complex
And messy to boot, so we approximate sanity
By filling compartments and writing thumbnail biographies,
And even though she packed the costume admirably
(Already forty, mind you, but nowhere near gone to fat)
Julie Newmar had already filled both outfit and niche
(And never mind Halle Berry’s turn,
Different raiment for a different time, after all,
And one suspects the next iteration of said slinky supervillainess
Will wear nothing more than feline-shaped ****** rings),
Not to mention she’d already entered our collective consciousness
With a frothy Noel novelty (unsubstantial, inconsequential
In and of its ownself, perhaps, but then one considers
The version foisted off on the populace by that woman
Who appropriated the moniker of the Blessed ******
All phoned-in faux Betty Boop, and one reconsiders)
So this was who she was, the book closed and sealed
(English only, never mind the other three tongues she spoke
Plus three more she proficiently purred in.)
They say when she died, she did not go gently, as it were,
But screamed and yowled for all she was still worth,
And maybe it was the cancer, certainly enough to do the job itself,
But perhaps it was the notion
That her era of innuendo and intimation was all done,
That she was transitioning to the static, to becoming a legacy,
A permanence that was stalking her,
Murderous, insatiable, inexorable.
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 10:39 AM UTC
Yes or No, The Crow Cawed(./?)
What Does it Entail, The Fox Chuckled as it enticingly twitched its hindquarters.
Who, crowed the Owl?
No. What, cried the Crow.
Is it For her or For him, questioned the quail.
This drew the eyes of the Predators and The quail hurried along into the long grass defining the other side of the clearing.
It made a point, chimed in the vulture, Which startled the cat Who Was Lying at the base of the tree, grooming itself as if To Seem to not be paying any attention at all.
But with a flick of a paw, the Cat covered it up, and reached Back to scratch Its Ear.
That Would Be the Question, wouldn't it, yowled the cat suddenly, Startling everyone In the Clearing, save the fox, which glinted with a bit Of Light Just for a moment as its jaws split into a Small smug Smile.
As it It were Expecting it, Harrumphed the Cat,
Settling back down across the roots to resume Grooming.
It certainly is the question, whispered the human in the clearing.
All 6 pairs of eyes turned toward the center, the Sixth seen just outside the clearing. Do you have an answer, whispered the quail.
I don't know.
The fox chuckled again, but the rest stayed Silent. Until the human looked up and the animals had faded away.
Only one pair of eyes remained,
looking back from the mirror,
reflected from the human's own face.
I don't know yet, the human whispered again.
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 1:44 AM UTC
Henceforth all shameful outbursts
Thenceforward my final death
Jilt, she made me play with fire
Wooed by appalling words she said
She, i ween, is no beautiful
She, i ween, is no enchanting
Yet, she is her dreamer, she is her art
Ergo since farewell, once deaf harked
After the dreamer, after the art
Sniffer cheated, sinner starved
Naked I mourned, naked I yowled
Lost faith from Agave, still fresh from the yard
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
He slipped on a set of headphones,
Adjusted a dial or two,
Then introduced his radio show
And the members of his crew,
‘The Horror Tales of the Greats’ he read
Each week to the folk in town,
Just as the Moon was coming up
With the sun then truly down.
And the folk had huddled round speakers
To hear, in a thousand homes,
The tales of Edgar Allan Poe
In the speaker’s crackling tones,
And an eerie mist fell over the town
If they chanced to look outside,
As the ghosts of horror stories past
Rose up from the place they died.
Each tone was sent with a shiver
From the night’s Plutonian shore,
Just as that stately bird of old
Had repeated, ‘Nevermore!’
While the cats had yowled in the alleyways
When he read a tale of sin,
Of walling up the corpse of his wife
When the Black Cat did him in.
The Fall of the House of Usher,
The Masque of the Red Death,
The tales built up in the atmosphere
And made them short of breath,
The Cask of Amontillado,
The Pendulum and the Pit,
Whatever the horror, and most intense
There was always more of it.
The stars that shone in the evening sky
Had gone, though the sky was clear
As the Moon had dropped down, over a hill
While the airwaves dripped with fear,
And the walls back there, in the studio
Were seeming to seep a flood,
As the speaker droned in the microphone
The studio filled with blood.
And suddenly then, a different voice
Was heard all over the town,
Rattling through their radio’s
And shouting the reader down.
‘Shutter your windows and lock your doors
Put children under the bed,
Hide yourselves right under the stairs
Or you may well end up dead!’
‘The very air that you breathe has been
Long saturated with dread,
Has filled your lungs with the ripe unclean
That came from somebody’s head.
The ghostly voice on your radio
That has whispered blood and gore,
Will drown tonight in the studio
So there won’t be any more.’
And right behind that terrible voice
There was choking sounds and screams,
Enough to curdle the very blood
And to give them nightmare dreams,
Then after a long, chilled silence of
The type that terror sates,
A voice said, ‘that was the final of
The Horror Tales of the Greats.’
David Lewis Paget
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC
i waited for you tonight
searched the corners of my room
searched inside my ink
on my walls
on my head, my hands
under and on my heart
i overwhelmed
blurred the ink on my face
yowled yowled
scrabbled the walls
hashed the map on the wall
country by country
destroyed it house by house
took my heart and hung it
on the wall
painted a new map
where I wait for you
in none of the houses
but
we are still strangers
Feb 26, 2014
Feb 26, 2014 at 5:37 AM UTC
you bring to me
your offering
of love
you place it gently
upon my sleeping breast
and the retreat
to the chair in the corner
and sit, content
to wait til I awake
you watch me
with eyes
full of adoration
hoping your token
will be sufficient
and bring praise
i awake....to find
a dead mouse
on my chest
in shock
i scream
long and loud
i do confess
you are confused
this is you best
you bring to me
and i yowled at it
you slink away
thinking these
human things
are difficult
to please
next time
i must bring
a baby rabbit
back to the nest
Aug 7, 2017
Aug 7, 2017 at 7:11 PM UTC