in the dead of (winter) night
in the dead of winter (night)
a mime was executed for stealing pancakes
the gunpowder tango sounded
over the burnt black bones of Bastille
wretchedness comes in manifold reverie
in distempered visions of epochal disasters
mime's widow's now loitering enshrouded
dismal and dismantled into the strawberry
storm of desolate lament on a horizon
monomaniacal embers of deceased mementos
shuddered after the rain of infirmity
day dawned once again with frolicsome frogmarch
in shrubberies echoing the ghastly romance
friendly fiends and fiercer fury of mountain tops
are inversed by limb contorting boredom
in the dead of (winter) night
in the dead of winter (night)
Categories:
distempered, art, cute, dream, imagination,
Form: Free verse
Happy we pals of battalions from villages born of love
And sweet tender mercies, unlike here entrenched
With the foe. Grey mists on the horizon, silhouetted hove
Of sallow composition; subdued and drenched.
Between us, in 'no man's land' a barren waste
Of limbs stacked high, orchestrating the way
Of death, foreshadowing yet even still the taste
To come, and soon; at the break of day.
Our friends, fathers, uncles and brothers
In arms; cleaving the ground of crimson red
Left on the battle scarred plains, with their mother's
Voices ringing out, as bells that toll the dead.
Then slowly faint whispers are heard amidst the grave
Of brown and grey. "Is that you John!Bill! Fred?"
"Is that you Hans!Jurgen!Emil!"? You the brave
Who fell, still living amongst the dead.
The shroud of death that covers distempered cries
Now lifting as both find their heroes of cause.
And naked transgression remains; signature of lies
And deceit; like whores showing no remorse.
Categories:
distempered, war,
Form: Rhyme
What trace of shadow, of language long and distempered in memorial
elegy, of abbeys as dismembered dolls lifted from their wrappings, of
hallowed grounds embedded with upturned forks while cigarette
embers chuckle soon sound aslumber in the crooks of pews, of
fallow convictions interred between dour stones of the Thames,
retracted like a lover's kiss, of security in flightless ebon wings
while its mercurial eye peeps on Marriott's old ladies for 30 quid,
of refuse systems as landmarks to history, dear old old Form(al)
city.
no cat no cradle in its strings of moving metal carriages in the heavens
and hell,
Shakespeare Shakespeare! What a play you've made of her, our fair
Lady London
Categories:
distempered, loss, places, sorrow, old,
Form: Prose Poetry
(Fever Cure)
When I was just a young lad,
and one respected ones
mum and dad!
An annual visitor
uninvited befelled one’s youth,
an infliction born of
distempered walls
and arctic drafts.
The doctor would be called
to staidly produce an opinion,
“Seven days indoors”
Before proceeding to scribble
in Latin, my wholesome cure,
“A cure to endure”
If only to fix one’s redemption.
Each day the prescribed tonic,
equaled one quarter of a cup
with the instructions to sip
slowly “Oh! So slowly” While
my mother’s brown eyes
never once left my agonizing
plight, the taste indescribable,
yet a remnant of memory
tells one, it could dwell
in this very ink,
I write with today!
© Harry J Horsman 2005
Categories:
distempered, life,
Form: Free verse