Horror and dreadful cheers,
Forgetting absurdity,
Haunted by untold fears.
Tango with monsters & ghosts,
Guilty Pleasure, thus fits.
Revenants; our revered hosts.
Dreaming on the dark side,
With nightmares as close mates,
Intoxicated high tide.
There, a River overflows,
Falling the sidewalk's tears,
Whole Sunset Boulevard froze.
Aloft, the people of night,
All sky seats are sold out.
'trick or treat?'
The kids shout.
Gone by the fantasy phase,
A leaf in the wind sways,
Another Halloween lays.
In the old city of St. John's,
in the older neighborhoods,
there are haunted houses...
residences with revenants...
apartments with apparitions...
even schools with spectres;
and there is one edifice with an eidolon
that I know well:
a softhearted shadow
very benevolent,
not at all maleficent.
It is supposedly the ghost of a child
who passed many years before;
a tale from days of yore
not well-known in local folklore.
This ghost is known to close
latches, doors and windows,
as if the occupants are being told
"Please keep out the damp and cold!" -
a phenomenon inexplicable
by a force completely invisible.
Some years ago, I observed this first-hand
and I'm sure I did not fully understand,
but I quickly deduced that it would be most
polite to say "Thank you" to the ghost -
a sudden burst of intuition
to please and placate this amiable apparition!
To Babylon, we came...
To watch the rise of Tower
The Tower of Cain
A fortress of dark n eternal pain
Stretching to the vaults of heaven
to quite the RAGE of Man
to challenge the reign of divinity
into humanities Wasteland of Ages
a paradise of industry and history
a sable hand in a gilded land
once called EDEN...!
Men Came With Machines of Desire,
Roses of Fire…
gauntlets of Steel
a mechanical tyranny did the same…
That clinched Thorns of Eternity!
The bloody reigns of infinity
Tears fall on dreary sand For years...
A return to Eden
Where MEN claim...
A Utopia of IRON and Dusty Screams
A future of means and profit!
Yearning for opulent DREAMS…
Built engines on the backs of the damned
A nation of lost revenants
On horizons golden Zion’s seams
Blood of war mixing with lambs cream.
A Fortress of Praise in a Corrupt age
Babylons full of wrath, as towers blaze!
We find our hearts & minds a daze
And only in our God's holy Rage...
Can cleanse
&
Turn the Page!
In a world which I birthed at the back of my brain
it is neither night nor day
beginnings and endings blended
in a perpetual purgatory of purple citrus sky
simultaneously sunrise and twilight
no twinkling stars upon which to waste wishes
and the sea I have never seen
is still and as smooth as crystal
There are no reminders of music
black birds soaring above sing no songs
Corpses crawl along sidewalks strewn with funeral flowers
clouds of incense disguising the scent of decay
desiccated flesh falling away from bone in the acrid air
until they are but skeletons held together by sinew
digging their bony digits into the cracks in the concrete
leaving white lines like a child drawing with chalk
collapsing with a clatter into disarticulated heaps
dissolving into dust whisked away by the west wind
Revenants of discarded dreams
once my dearest, faithful friends
I was forced to finally strangle in self defense
due to their intransigence.
harsh reality
revenants of slavery
reminders removed
I come accustomed to the Providence
The perils that be falling me l
I come accustomed to my revenants
the reality of the colored used
I come accustomed to my liberties
Constrained conflicted and arranged
I come accustomed to the way the world views me
Views me as I am
I am befallen I come accustomed to the ways of this world
And I stand in rally
I am be fallen so I am calling on the promises of you
10/24/20
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2020
Like all things related to screwballs
and misfits
I was born looking for a word
inside a clock.
Back then, time ticked loudly,
clocks ran faster than chipmunks.
Young bones were fueled by green grenades
plucked from low-hanging life-lines.
I needed words to save the world,
I needed a clock-case to store them in,
I needed speedbumps for my brain.
Mother said that If I lived to be a man
I would be all strewn about
like a crow-pecked scarecrow.
Eventually I discovered
a way to make words bespoke,
to give them meaning
outside of the hide-bound
and buckram dictionary.
Naturally I had to invent my own time-machine,
and had to surrender to a fanciful argot.
For a long while, only blithe revenants
and their little helpers
could read my tenuous tidings.
It was only when my pipsqueak prattle
had the effrontery to call itself ‘poetry’
that some said sadly
that I may be ever so slightly explicable.
Alas mother was right, there is only the clock,
and it runs on mechanical words,
and so I remain a rare bird
bamboozled by age-worn chalk-talk,
a jargon that refuses
to jump out of its own skin.
betroth yourselves
to old houses of Charlottenburg
let yourselves be mollycoddled
by the petrified rain king
buy yourselves a shiny armour
of a former seraphim
call yourselves bourgeois,
dear ambassadors of art
prosy playwriters
live futile lives
full of futile effort
we are the revenants of heedlessness
the masses of plastic limpidness
and cubists that paint no more
like vortex and vertigo
we're abstract in a colour gamut
but I only like to whisper
among the lilies of rusty minefields
replacing the city with simplicity
Within the pages of a book
I find sanctuary, a quiet nook,
Where I often retreat and find
The kindest heart, the vilest mind.
Whenever I just feel like getting away
From the rigors of life on any day,
I step through the portals of a book
Into a fantasy world and take a look:
At the mythical realm of unicorns,
Dragons, mermaids, seductive sirens,
At the dreams, adventures and magic,
Or life and death’s purpose and logic;
Folktales of love, miracles, covenants,
Of knights, heroes and revenants,
Of saints, demigods and mystics,
Priests, pundits, mullahs and clerics.
Stories of betrayal of trust,
Piety, innocence and lust,
Of deceit, debauchery and debacles,
Of witches, vampires and oracles.
Deeds of dictators, despots and czars
The chaotic world of wasteful wars
Teeming with malicious mobs,
Fawners, snivelers and slimy slobs.
Be it a romance or a tragedy,
Mystery, history or comedy,
Oh, just give me but a book any
And I’ll forgo a damsel’s company!
In the Library contest by Isaiah Zerbst