The house on the edge of Darkly Wood, though ruined forty years or more still shows its lights on moonless nights where there never were any before.
They think it’s prank by local lads who want to scare their sweethearts but you tell me how they put one now in a tower collapsed into parts.
‘A trick of the light’ the new priest said on a visit to see the beams but his face want as pale as a ship’s white sail and he couldn’t deny the screams.
No-one goes to the house any more not man nor beast nor dog nor brother only a girl with a trailing axe who cries over and over for mother.
Curved glass focuses the sun on tiny Frenchmen. The Eiffel Tower wilts under heated water. Mock Parisians wish for a coating of dust to protect them from the onslaught of summer
They flock here after tragedy this flock of souls, these sheep that bleat and moan of ‘goings on’ yet in the darkness keep their garlic bulbs and silver shot and horseshoes nailed above the door - ‘For luck,’ they say yet whisper still of iron rings for good or ill and cross themselves and every night they swear to keep the faith alight. The fires are dead, the church is full - if God allows both old and new; for who are we to make a cull when monsters are His children too?
The path 'twixt wood and field filled with mist and sodden leaves and yet within the silence an echo of a dream.
Spider's web on teasel catches the mist for a spider's bath among the spikes while gorse, thinking of spring sends yellow pea-flowers searching for bees.
In the grass rusted machinery returns to the earth while pampas plumes echo factory smoke from long ago
“I want doesn’t get.” The purse-lipped voice of her mother, remembered. Ritalin pills fall like Smarties onto snow white ice-cream and she wishes her mum was still alive.
Right on the edge of Darkley Wood stand the ruins of a house that was never no good. It burned to the ground on a night long ago when the wind was a-howling and threatening snow. The only survivor of perishing fire was a girl and her mother, but I’ll be a liar if I tell you that they never was found except in a casket, six feet underground.
She wished for ruby slippers but what she got was hot steel nailed into each sole and her toenails painted with creosote. “Sucks to be a satyr,” her father said.
Ruby flames devour and burn the manor house – it lights for miles this wooded hill but still she hears the screams and mortal pleas of those die, that used to tease and keep her from her midnight sleep and steal away her daddy’s smiles until his face would fall and turn…
It wasn’t her - it couldn’t be a little girl who tossed the match upon a bale of kerosene- soaked hay and hammered shut the doors and windows but allowed her daddy one last sight of mother’s smiles in firelight
For now the monsters all are dead and left but shadows in her head and pain within her spirit’s hall for pie for one is pie for all and into her they all had hid and whisper now of what they did so Lucy, grown into a wife sharpens well the carving knife.
Fourteen nights without sleep - her eyes are dark and heavy. An essay that has made her weep extracted fearsome levy Too many night-time creatures haunt this mansion in the wood for as she rubs at tear-red eyes she fears nothing good will happen in this cursed ward ‘til Fate takes her in hand and lets her loose with bloody sword on legions of the damned.
In a locked drawer in the study is a little leather case I know just where the key is – on the stuffed iguana’s base. Inside, for I have seen it, is a single glass syringe with seven vials of poison and a very rusty hinge. If I got the critter out and used its little sticker the Manor would be mine alone – Thanks to my poison pricker.
Mister cat fell in the lake and we, oblivious to his cries, snuffled into our scarves and hats, and scattered cat biscuits like crunchy falling rain waiting for the sun.
There’s a little girl crying, sitting on the stair she’s lost her loving mother and Daddy doesn’t care. She thinks her heart is breaking ‘cause the agony is hard to bear.
There’s a little girl crying, standing in the hall she needs someone to help her but don’t know who to call. She’s got herself a bible but it’s no help at all.
There’s a little girl crying, she needs her bed and board fed up with ghosts and monsters making up a hoard She’s going to get some vengeance starting with a sword.
Cigarettes gave her cancer; champagne: heartburn. Being perpendicular gave her vertigo. The sparkle of her personality atrophied under chemo and the glimmer of magenta sanity discombobulated according to obfuscated design.
Sheltered by ancient potting shed I stand my hands are cold and toes in heeled shoe I see you looking at me, dearest child, for through the window I see lurking, you.
Stay not your hand with wicked carving knife for nothing here on earth could change this view: No snik-a-snaking blade will save your life for through the window I see lurking, you.
I am a product of that which you fear for through the window I see lurking, you; and though I died upon the ground right here, my beloved child has need of me anew.
Factory Walls. paths bleak traffic signs do this; don't do that. Sunshine on steel towers full of plastic pellets and cardboard tubes.
Walls scrawled with names - forgotten teens and footballers too old to play.
Rusted fences padlocked against children and the odd vandal come to smash a window or get smashed
Smashed mashed trashed
a wastrel, wasted strung out on cheap lager and a tenner of H.
That old door bolted for the last time while the Old Man's Beard flourishes through the new steel fence that protects the wasteland from parked cars rusting.
She looks down on curving garden path where potting shed occludes the view where naked willows whip in windy wrath through the window a figure lurks, but who?
A glint of light on shards of broken glass beat back a shadow of a figure new- perhaps the dark will sometime come to pass through the window a figure lurks, but who?
No need to fear the glinting blade of kitchen knife when what you hold shines with the moonlight blue what price in peace of mind when so cheap is life -- through the window a figure lurks, but who?
What eldritch flame if held in hands so white through the window a figure lurks, but who? with fangs that glint against the dying of the light for there her mother stands with payment due.