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Barosus
Kiss of FireMy sly tongue is a dancing devil
Venomous and agile as an adder
I cannot trust this viper's heart
Nesting snuggly under my sternum
My imagination is slowly writhing
With sinuous reticulated falsities
Poetry hides a cunning incubus
Whispering illusionary divinations
And dark chthonian sophistries
As mellifluous as Lorelei’s whiles
Twisting flattery into execration
Becoming what I hate the most
My lips are tainted with poison
A deceitful promise of nepenthe
Bitter and deadly as nightshade
Kisses of a death angel’s specter
I glance behind my shoulder at
The quivering, gliding shadows
Trailing in the wake of my words
They are eclipsing my ideology
Turning all my verities into lies
I saw a shimmering seraph flying
Blazing in resplendent freedom
Fully alive and joyously exultant
But my darkness echoes Hades
A minacious troglodyte of night
Depriving my world of springtime
I too have abducted Persephone
Bound her in poetic incantations
Words are treacherous shackles
Expressing all
Kintsukuroi HeartI am broken shards and sharp angles
Every razor edge is wickedly barbed
I’ll cut you if you touch me carelessly
My heart is hard as a porcelain vase
Smashed on the cold flagstone floor
But your Kintsurukoi is so masterful
And your creative hands so talented
That you collect all the broken pieces
And painstakingly reassemble them
Like a jigsaw puzzle of my wreckage
You fill the scars with precious gold
Somehow your artistry transfigures
Me into something more valuable,
Complete, and unspeakably beautiful
Than I ever was before I was broken
©All original work copyright Edward D Cates 2018
Cairn of Regrets
I built this cairn of regrets
Out of detritus I collected
To cover my broken heart
In a forsaken burial mound
Concealed like a cairngorm
A stone that bears remembrance
Of my lost and fractured hopes
Broken when my wings failed
My breath froze in my lungs
And I fell from the heights
Onto the cruel, jagged rocks
Of my own arrogant vanity
My ghost yet haunts the scree
Upon the windswept highlands
Far above the alpine tree line
I stare upwards at the skies
In an eternal pang of longing
Where the chill of old sorrows
Seeps into the hollow places
Between my empty eye sockets
Whistles between clenched teeth
And invades my hollow ribcage
If you stumble upon my remains
Let my hoary bones lie fallow
Until the mountains crumble
The callous sky burns black
And time itself cracks and falls
Let my lichen shrouded skull
Keep it’s eternal vigil on high
Lest my curse fall on you too
All original work © copyright Edward D Cates 2018
Reworked 2019
Unfamiliar InspirationYou utterances savage me with a syllable
From above my shattered preconceptions
I hear the beating of vast ebon wings
A terrible feasting on Promethean flesh
By incendiary mercurial compulsions
Transcending my plebeian, apathetic idiom
Drowning me in the exquisite agony of you
Your will induces shudders as chains shatter
And I rise again to meet the challenge
Smoldering in your amaranthine eyes
©All original work copyright Edward D Cates 2018
Cicatrix of HopeAfter the tempest’s passage
A silent rose stands naked
Under the monochromatic sky
Stripped of its glorious bloom
A benumbed and tortured soul
Thunder’s Plutonian laughter
Eclipsing summer’s innocence
Leaving the cruel cicatrices
Of fragrant dreams discarded
Where its petals once robed
It glorious sartorial splendor
With the certitude of winter
Encompassing her imaginations
The distant cadence of thunder
Whispers an unexpected hope
An electric epiphany blossoms
The Master mounts a new canvas
And smiles lovingly at the rose
For beneath those cruel scars
Lies the rosehip of resurrection
And the expectancy of spring
©All original work copyright Edward D Cates 2018
Thank you https://summerdreams-art.deviantart.com/ for your inspiration. Never stop dreaming!
MorganaMidnight slithers across the hoary moor,
Caressing the ancient standing stones
Violet shadows under which I slumber
The lichens of mundane social mores
Have usurped the throne of a king
Obscured and eroded the glyphs
That once bore tales of my heroic saga
Exploits of conquest and glory
My true heart is buried as a cairngorm
Bearing the spirit of primordial monarchs
You, like Morgana weave your incantations
The night winds convey your voice
Ensorcelling me by my true name
An eldritch aria that woos and awakens
Enervating my innermost discontent
With the shackles of insipid convention
The old bonds are deeper, more reckless
Bestirring me again from hateful repose
The familiar compulsion of your allurement
Arousing slumbering, forbidden yearnings
I tremble, fully awakened and ravenous
Your mellifluous call betrays your desire
I can feel its electric fires enrobing
My dry bones with new, hard flesh
I shudder and ascend once more
To answer your summons
©All original work copyright Baro
How To Make a MonsterNauseated and disillusioned
By the tiny people around me
Living antiseptic, vacuous lives
Engrossed in superficial pursuits
Preposterous masquerade of artifice
You have played me for a fool
I don’t know the rules to this game
This illusion you call “reality”
I’m not part of it, disconected
Some capricious cosmic joke
The supercilious vanity
The caustic lie of happiness
Foisted on the world by our incapacities
Your love is a disease
And you don’t smell the putrescence
Or see the maggots writhing
Beneath your vain pretensions
Consuming your ideology of slavery
Do you even truly exist
Or are you just a grand delusion
Foisted on my aching solitude
By the vicissitudes of your inhumanity
I’m Isolated in a crowd
Your laughter has teeth
You trample my existence
I'm drowning in impotent loathing
A storm Is brewing, thunder rumbling
I see it in your disdainful eyes
I taste it in your night terrors
As you pray for the dawn
With a death mask for my poker face
I'
SnowThe storm had caught him unprepared. After he had been dropped off at the house, he headed out quickly across the backyard straight for the frozen lake shore. The sky seemed so low he could almost reach up and touch the pregnant belly of the clouds overhead as he set off alone from the farmhouse.
There was an almost uncanny silence to the New England landscape that was robed white in snow. A strange restlessness had driven him away from the stale routines of urban life into the open wilds that late afternoon. The call of solitude and the comfort of his own imagination would be inspired by the quiet, crystalline grandeur of the winter landscape. It seemed an irresistible tug on his soul. That call often summoned him out and away from his fellow men on his frequent visits to the ancient ancestral home.
The crusty snow crunched under his booted tread as he stepped out onto the lake ice, heavy staff in hand. The lake was oddly devoid of human activity that day. However, it was a weekday af
Potato VampireDeadly shade of the night
Dweller in darkness
Rising from your bed of loam
With an eye to propagate yourself
What rich robes you wear
Heavily starched and stiff
Corpse white, royal purple
And wealthy gold
As subtle as an aristocrat’s
Darkest epicurean savor
We all know your name
And have tasted your whiles
You vampire
Potato
