The Pumpkin Man - A Halloween Poem

I hear it's taunting laugh each halloween
And remember the light that burned inside
It's hollowed head the night I nearly died.
The pumpkin comes and he comes for me.
With chains that whip around hunching form,
Dirtied by the black earth from which he climbs,
His searching eyes look deep inside my mind
As he hunts and I pray to see the dawn.
Though sealed with locks and wards to keep him out
I hear his fingers scraping at my door
Gnarled knuckles tipped with bloody, brazen claws,
I know his furious will without a doubt.
That which would escape his ungodly strength
Is cursed to feel it's rage at painful length.

The Dark - Short Story

Let's be frank for a minute. I know.

What do I know? I know a lot of things about you. I know you sometimes run up or down the stairs when it's dark because you're sure there is something behind you. I know you sometimes sit in your room at night and you can't sleep because you're sure that there is something there. I know you sometimes feel it behind you. You can almost feel it's fingers stroking the back of your neck as it reaches for you daring you to turn around and look at it and I know you seldom do. I know you feel it because, sometimes, I feel it too. We all do.

What if one time you turned around and this thing you were so terrified of was standing there. What would it be? Some great, bestial, hulking monster with black fur and sharp teeth, claws dripping with fresh blood? A lithe, pale demon with empty eyes and a bright grin, come to collect what he is due? The ghost of a little girl, looking up at you knowingly, pointing just over your right shoulder at the even worse terror that snuck up when you turned? What would it be?

For me, it was this.

My walk home is neither perilous, nor dark. As walks go it's quite good actually. No dark parks to cross or bridges to pass under. Just one, well lit alley and other than that, it's all streets. I could take the long way around, avoid the alley entirely but that would add five minutes to my journey and who can be arsed with that, right? I'd been out with my friends on this night and I'd had a good time. Average bus ride home despite the fact my bus always has at least one smelly bastard on board who forces you to spend 90% of the journey with your hand over your face. I got off as normal, walked my normal route and came to the alley.

The lights were out.

I'm a big, brave boy though. Well, not actually big but old enough to walk down a straight alley on my own when I can see all the way to the other side and see that nothing is in my way. That was my first mistake. Dark doesn't look as dark when you're looking into it, especially when you can see lights at the other side. It just looks dim. So in I walked and all the colour drained from the world.

Sixty seconds. That's all it would take at a steady place to get from one end to the other. I was getting along relatively well but when I got about a third of the way, it suddenly got darker. Sounds strange I know, but it's like the street lights at either end suddenly dimmed, like somebody had thrown a thin towel over them and the light was struggling to get through. At this point I started to feel a little nervous.

Don't judge me for that. Seems a little trite I know but people get nervous over the strangest of things but for me, the dark isn't usually one of them. The light suddenly going from the world though, that makes me nervous. I walked on though. Of course I did. Stopping would be pointless. Then I'm just standing in a dark alley and going back would be silly. Not like anything was going to get me, me being in the middle of the suburbs and everything.

A few seconds later was when I felt it. That feeling I was talking about right back at the start. The fingers, on your neck. The eyes sizing up whether you'd make a decent meal. I sped up a little. I was two thirds of the way now and feeling anxious to get out of the alley. The lights went out entirely. Not just the street lambs not 50 meters away. It was like the moon went out along with every light for miles around. It was so pitch dark I couldn't even see the floor. I just kept going straight, breaking into an ambling jog, when something moved in front of me. This shifting in the darkness just darted past maybe 5 feet away. I stopped. I wish I hadn't. I felt it there then and I was frozen to the spot. It was just over my shoulder, grinning or snarling, hungry or enraged. I turned on the spot and there it was, face to face with me, a slight smile playing over it's lips.

It was me. It had my face and my clothes and my body, but it's eyes. It's eyes I remember. Jet black and bottomless and completely unforgiving. It didn't move. It just stood with me inches away completely transfixed. I didn't scream. I didn't do anything except turn and go the opposite way as fast as my jelly legs would carry me. About five meters from the end of the alley all the lights came back on and it was blinding but I didn't stop. I ran all the way back to my house.

I sat up that night, watching my bedroom door, waiting for it to creak open. I held my need for the toilet until the following morning and I did not sleep. It didn't come for me. It hasn't yet and I have never seen it since, but sometimes, when I think about it or people ask me what the scariest thing I've ever seen is, it's eyes, it's stolen face pop into my head and I spend another night waiting for it, hoping in a strange way that it would just hurry up and get it over with.

Fire (Theme) - A Poem

Great, blinding, orange leaves greet my waking vision.
What clear autumn morning is this
That bleeds in from the sides?
This is unnatural. It's steady heat wasting.
Shouldn't I feel the cold right now
Stroking my exposed skin?
Am I freezing? This stillness is an intense thing,
And is made even more vicious
For it's biting red teeth.
Great, blinding, orange leaves burn my world to ashes,
Volumes of memory destroyed,
Disappearing with me.

Water (Theme) - A Poem

My forehead rests on the wall,
The water spills over me,
I wash away the sleepless night
But it won't help at all
The arms of Neptune no boon
Because I am so lonely,
No lingering soak will comfort
So I retire to my room.
The soft rainfall teases me
With memories of idling
Hiding indoors on rainy days
When I could gladly sleep.
But I can't afford to dream
My willpower flowed away
With the tears as you left this world
Of rainfall, rust and grey.

Want to read some great poetry?

Looking to read some great classic poetry but have absolutely no idea where to start? I will be your guide. I'm going to recommend you all 5 brilliant poems a week that you can pick and choose from that aren't pretentious crap : D

William Butler Yeats - The Second Coming
I mentioned this poem recently as one of those pieces of work I didn't appreciate when I first read it. If you've read any Lovecraft or you're a fan of pervasive horror and dread, this poem is for you. It's about The Second Coming, but not the one you expect. Give it a read.

Lewis Carroll - Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Anybody wants to read this poem and then ask me what it all means, I really can tell you! A mome rath is a little lost green pig far from home. Happy nonsense from the Wonderland books. I almost wrote boobs then.

Pablo Neruda - And Because Love Battles
I feel that no part of the deep emotion of this poem was lost in translation. Just read it and feel the words. Pablo Neruda's life is easily as interesting as his poetry. A revolutionary and a great man, his work really gives you a sense of the person he was.

William Shakespeare - Hamlet's Soliloquy
Seems like a cliche to include this but, seriously, taken alone or as part of the body of work, this is, in my opinion, the perfect poetic monologue and a perfect example of why you should give all poetry an honest chance again. Even Shakespeare, that topic we study to death in school and is ruined for it's overexposure, still contains the odd gem for me.

Seamus Heaney - Digging
Seamus Heaney is, for me, the perfect example of what a modern poet should strive to be. Untainted by his choice of art, Seamus Heaney's work is plain talking, clear, illuminating and beautiful. He exhibits a respect for his subject matter that never seems exploitative. This poem, about his father seems to be a heartfelt memory that paints a picture that, for me, makes me feel like I am there, with a potato in my small, child's hands.

That's it for now. Some of my favourite poetry of the moment. Click on the links in the titles and give them a read. See if you feel something other than senior school boredom now. I can promise that something will strike you.

27 and a Bit Years

Like polished glass,
I see through you
And see myself.
But this is no compensation.
What you stand for,
I've hated it
For all my life.
Your anger and indignant rage?
The milk left out?
You're just lazy
And sour smelling.
Dead to me like your torn collar,
Though I love you,
Though I hate you,
My reflection
In an older mirror than mine.
For the thrown plates
And the crying
And your own woe
Over your father's early death,
I walk away.
I walk away
Because it's hard
To preserve your memory,
A torturer,
Just as fondly
As it now is.
It is too late to start trying.

Love - Day One

The "not again" terror is quickly drowned,
Driven down by the differences you feel
And so suddenly you stand, quite confused
By her handiwork, etched in brightest steel,
Single letters scratched in deep, cursive script,
Secretly spelling your elusive name
Through the smallest cryptic clue you would leave
And your smile and mastery of this game.
This first day feels far and familiar
And so I remember it all and none,
But for the feeling, the joy in my soul
That never or ever feels like it's gone.
This distance is- Oh, it is a cruel thing
A dull, nagging pain for us both to bear,
When the future bears such sweet fruit for us
This moment's torture is both raw and rare.

Poisoner

A taste of a sick and spiteful draft
Is all it took to render your flesh from your soul
And by my grand artifice and craft
Cast you full into that dank and bottomless hole
So I don't need to think of you now
All unfilled and wasting, wormfood in the deep dirt
Still calling out to fulfill that vow
That promise to stay strong and never cause you hurt
But you didn't count on my fierce heart
Or my discovery of your cold, easy lies,
And how they would make no difference
To the stony face of a man already hard.

Mmmmm, Cream

I have been challenged by my friend Saucy to write a poem about cream. This is in an attempt to become the world's foremost cream-based poet. As you may be aware, the current holder of this title is one Howard Moon. I would like him to know that I am coming at him. I am coming at him like a hot flannel.

Creamylicious

Oh nasty cream, I cannot help myself!
I plunge my fingers into your pale heap
And pull them free, doused in your thick goodness.
Mmm, you taste so good that I want to weep.
Why do you do this to me? You hussy!
You delve your grip into my great buttocks,
Ever expanding since I first had you,
That first, guilty lick off a cherry top.
Oh, nasty cream, you bitch! You clogged my veins!
But I find it in myself to forgive
And continue to grant you your entry
The doctor says I don't have long to live...
So what? Cover my corpse in her thick lumps
So sinful and delicious and I'll die
A happy and corpulent, stinky corpse,
60 percent fat under the night sky.

4 Haikus

Fog's milky veil
Clouds the world in mystery
But I see through it.

The cruel cold squeezes,
And my lungs ache in it's grip
Stealing my breath fast

Spring rain in our hair
We celebrate it's coming
By whining a lot.

The hot summer wind,
Fingers of ready repair
Cure me of my lows.

Udulo Stanzas 1,2,3 and 4 - Enjoy : )

Hi guys,
Sleeplessness has lead me to this place and so I thought I'd post the next 3 stanzas (starting with the introduction I posted a few days ago) of Udulo's Rise, part one of Udulo's Wars, my epic poem.

Time. Time is a fickle beast who would see us fall
And laugh again like she laughed at our fathers passed.
Her hand does pluck the strings of everything we do
And she is not alone in her cruel, meddling ways.
Through emotion and our own wanton selfish acts
We cut a path through life that has only one end,
Invisible to all save our own mortal grace,
Inspired by the web weaved through all our waking days.
Many walk on, undaunted by this final truth
Until the telling is told by their aching bones
And, weary, they lay down to take their final rest
Terrified of all they ignored until too late.
But this is not the road for every living man.
Some hesitate to walk at all, ever in fear,
Where others positively sprint for the finish,
While precious few choose eternity over fate.

What follows is the story of one man who did
And the trials on his quest for most eternal life,
The blood he spilled in the name of selfish desire
And the great warrior who would oppose him so.
But not always were these two men destined for this
And like all things there story has a humble start
Of soldiers singing songs of great glory,
Before diving in to disaster down below.
But wait. Before we even come to talk of this,
Let us fondly speak again of our mistress, Time.
Her fingers clicking loudly on her looking glass
As she, unentertained, so wearily looks on.
Upon it's mirrored surface, two men standing tall,
Of different times and different motives, ways and thoughts
Who, by her grace alone could be made eternal
And see all of their petty, mortal concerns gone.

On one side, large, powerful and catlike he stood
Firm of feature and clearly too of iron will.
Handsome and Adonis-like with his rusted skin.
His name is Morrovore and he wears passion's guise.
Here, he worked a field as Mistress Time looked on bored
Before dipping her finger in the polished glass,
Stirring up his lifetime and looking on more pleased
As he became a soldier, wars fires in his eyes.
The other man, a carpenter before this change
Carving beautiful works of artistry in wood
Was changed as Morrovore's ripples washed over him
Erasing everything poor Udulo would be.
In his place cowered a child near a broken home
Tears streaming down his distraught and disheartened face
Before Mistress Time waved the sorry boy away,
Deeming the soldier's tale more interesting to see.

Those years of Morrovore's life are lost to us all.
Only tall tales of his strength and later cruelty
Remain to remind us of his most heinous fall,
From legend to terror in the space of ten years.
His meteoric rise through the officer's corps
Tainted by his betrayal of the common good,
Mankind's spread across the bright and most distant stars
Arrested as his greed grew for power through fear.
He was opposed and beaten by an army strong
But he escaped with many shamed and loyal kin,
Each the equal of any great warrior then
And they became twisted souls and killers of men.
These Void Ravens, pirates and villains to a fault
And all wealthier than you'd care to imagine.
It is in this state that our story finds it start,
And on the world Apollo, war torn skies open.

I agree with Plutarch.

"Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks. "
    Plutarch


Plutarch was born in 46AD. A scholar and essayist, he probably said loads of intelligent stuff about life and celebrity and loads of other stuff that doesn't affect this statement in any way shape or form. As a matter of fact, he's entirely pointless to this piece of writing in any way, shape or form except for the fact that he was a pretty clever dude and made the statement I started this block of nonsense words with.


Needless to say, (since I put it in the title) I completely agree with him. A beautiful piece of art can speak volumes to the viewer, sparking ideas, detonating preconceptive grenades in your head and generally making an awful mess of your surroundings as you try to create some physical representation of these wonderful, grand revelations before, as humans are prone to do, you forget all about it because 'Stenders is on.


In the same way, when a poet collects those perfect words and puts them onto paper for the world to read, the effect is capable of drawing a world-collapsing picture in your mind, highlighting things you didn't know or realise and making you aware of feelings you didn't know existed. Take "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. I read this in high school and at the time, my soft, pink brain didn't appreciate how terrifying and bleak the ideas presented are. Not until recently, upon reappraising the poem with my new, 13 years older and much grayer and scalier brain did these things occur to me.


If you don't read poetry because when you were at school you found it really boring and annoying (like I did(!)), I implore you, give it a chance. You've been coming back to read my stuff to some extent or you wouldn't be reading this now. You want something that isn't complicated just for it's own sake (the poetic equivalent of one red and one blue line on a white background... it doesn't mean anything.) then read some Yeats, Poe or Wilde. It will make you appreciate poetry more. Just like music, art, television and fiction, not every poem or poet is great. By tarring it all with the same brush, you honestly miss out.


Any favourite poets of yours that I should be reading? You have any work you want me to have a look at? Drop me a link in the comments box.

Charcoal

Oh I'm waiting
For that brightest day,
When these swaddling robes will fall away
And the sun can shine again
On our faces
As comfort returns
To the world which we've watched burn
Over a charcoal formed of pain.

Udulo's Rise - Introduction

Here is the first 16 lines of the first part of what will be my attempt to write an epic poem. The complete story will be called Udulo's Wars and it's made up of four parts. I have a lot more down on paper and ready to go and part one is nearly complete in it's entirety. As I said earlier, I'm looking for art contributions to go in to a free to download e-book that will contain all of part one. If you're interested, drop me a line via email (arkofthetwilight@hotmail.co.uk), in the comments box down below or to my twitter @zerodemon.

Here it is for your reading pleasure

Time. Time is a fickle beast who would see us fall
And laugh again like she laughed at our fathers passed.
Her hand does pluck the strings of everything we do
And she is not alone in her cruel, meddling ways.
Through emotion and our own wanton selfish acts
We cut a path through life that has only one end,
Invisible to all save our own mortal grace,
Inspired by the web weaved through all our waking days.
Many walk on, undaunted by this final truth
Until the telling is told by their aching bones
And, weary, they lay down to take their final rest
Terrified of all they ignored until too late.
But this is not the road for every living man.
Some hesitate to walk at all, ever in fear,
Where others positively sprint for the finish,
While precious few choose eternity over fate.

What follows is a story of one man who did...

Prayer

I feel so weakened
Please God make me bulletproof
So I can get home

My sleep doesn't come
I struggle with my sheets and
My eyes will not close

I wrestle myself
Under the lord's watchful eye
Please give me some hope

This is no trifle
No simple victory comes
I'm in this alone.

For a Friend

The betrayal is masked behind his puckered lips
And his careful, rampaging behavior problems
Blames them for everything as he stumbles and trips
Knows you will forgive, so he repeats his errors.
His love carousel takes you around and around
So you can't see who lies behind the central pole
Her eyes locked on his as much as yours are no doubt
As ignorant, as innocent of tainted soul.
As hateful. As filled with bile as you both should be
Misdirecting that venom at one another
Tolerating the lies he so clumsily covers
As, unaffected, he plays a funny game of three.

In My Cell - A Poem

My dear love,

You affected me with those words you spoke

And I crawled on my belly through the dirt

In the dark and tried to cry out the pain

It was in this shuddering sorry state

That they found me, a sobbing broken man

With nothing to live for. Soiled. Insane.

They took me darling. In a truck I was born

Away and carried to a white building

Glimmering on the sun-bleached morning sands

Of some faraway desert I don't know.

And it was here, my love, that I was changed

By my master's strong master-crafting hands.

I am better now, by a hundred miles

Taller. Stronger. Tougher. More confident...

And more the kind of man that you could love

Much more submissive. More under the thumb

Just as you would have chosen to have me

Before you cast me aside, lost cause done.

How I know you’d love this new leather hide

Beneath your ever wandering fingertips,

These crushing hands pressed so sweetly, gently,

Over your tiny, precious, female wrists

This strength. These arms to hold you to me now.

I wonder, in my cell, do you miss me?

They call it a close observation suite

But I know what that means, though they do watch.

I know they’re scared of what I can do now.

But like the man from that movie we saw

I do seem like I couldn’t harm a fly

I just sit, still and quiet as a mouse.

A mouse... Oh I remember we had mice...

I don’t remember much from before love...

Except you. Your eyes. Your smile. Your kindness.

Your scream for me to get out of your house...

A few select memories of good things,

Good times where I thought forever meant less...

I wonder, in my cell, do you miss me?

I write knowing this will never be read,

At least not by you. They certainly will.

They’ll pore over it commenting on

How even though I should be all animal

How human my writing seems to be still

I hope I do see you again darling.

I never had the chance to say goodbye

To tell you the truth about how I feel

Not as I remember, which is not well.

But I remember your perfect brown eyes

And I wonder, in my cell, if you’re real.

A

Bedroom 3

To understand this long isolation...
I'll tell you. I've spent hours just... just watching
The air wave above the radiator.
Just watching and sitting and nothing more.
Feeling this awful anxious garroting
Pulling at my throat, dragging my insides
Down deep and lower than the wooden floor
So I wake sometimes thinking that I've died.
I can taste the iron taste of it.
A black metal mountain of hope
But it's inconceivable too.
It's unscalable razor tips
Jagged as a terrible joke
Born out of something so untrue.

Jean Cocteau and the Gordian Folly

"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie."
      Jean Cocteau 

Read this quote today and it made me laugh. I understand the idea (that the poets mission is to unravel life's mystery) but it's an awful reference. The point of the Gordian knot was that it had no visible ends and, as such could not be untied by any normal means. The story goes that Alexander cut the rope to create an end from which he could untie the knot. Very practical. He then went on to conquer all of Asia, demonstrating this knowledge, wisdom and practicality. Cocteau has here labeled him a lunatic. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

He also states that the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie this impossible to untie knot. From this I could surmise that the poets efforts are fruitless. Poetry is an art of self expression and a way to craft complicated ideas into something more beautiful than an essay. A poets efforts are never fruitless, even if he is never read because the world can always do with more beautiful words.

Obviously the above is not what he intended to say (or maybe it was and he reveled in the idea that he considered himself a fool) but it still made me giggle.

I like the idea that the world is filled with only three kinds of people. Children, lunatics and fools. Which are you? I'm not asking that rhetorically. Actually tell me. I think I'm a bit of all three.

Fragrance

I identify your presence next to me by their subtle scent
And the memory of the taste of dried petals in my open mouth
From where we shared seven blissful hours of sleeping lungs full of air
On the back of goodnight kisses in the days before you left...

You are gone of course. Of course you are and I, weary traveller,
Am walking the slow path to you through fields of wearing difficulty.
Not that I mind of course! The leaves and stems brush my legs
Reminding me of how the reward outweighs the risk to be with her.

Tracks

The trundle of tracks
As the tank makes it's way our way,
A great hulk bastard
And the panic grips.
But please, you can't judge us for that.
We know who's inside...
His name is terror
The blood of friend and foe alike
Stain his whirring blade
And he is legend
Pure fame and infamy alike
He lives for the kill.

He lives for the kill
And today, the kill will be us.
Me and these nine men.
These Nine good, strong men
Who've lived, fought and bled together
On a hundred fields
And all wept as one
When a brother of ours would fall
And go to the dust.
Now, under this sun,
This foreign sun, this blazing sky,
Our ten times had come.

A screech splits the air
We dare to hope and in hope look
To see him standing
Clad in midnight blue,
Fist wreathed in crackling energy,
Our leader, our lord,
Had blitzed this gargant,
In a rage or gallant charge and
Punched it's tracks apart
So, Immobilised,
It's great steel boarding ramp descends
And out, the beast stepped.

Bloody betrayer,
Followed by his gore soaked brothers
Crimson armour slick
And shiny with fresh
Vital fluids no doubt our own
Or that of our friends,
Facing our saviour
The challenge obvious to all
So with little more
Than a subtle nod
They barreled headlong straight toward
Their object of hate.

Unfair, this battle,
For Kharn (as he in red is named)
Was brutal and strong
A born warrior
With centuries experience
And a god's support
While our man Kantor
(In Blue) is no match for this ghoul
Though no slouch himself
And more a hero
For knowing this obvious fact
And still attacking.

Steeled fist and axe met
Sparks flew and Kantors blood was drawn
Once and twice he cleaved
Once and twice he fell
And once and twice Kantor would stand
And face Kharn's fury
And as cowards do
We bowed heads to his bravery
And prepared to flee
When, with great passion
Kantor ducked a great, killing blow
Taking Kharn to ground

Atop his prone body
Kantor raised his crackling gauntlet
And caved in his skull
When, like bitter crows,
Kharn's brothers descended en masse
In desperation
And this is how we,
In desperation charged to save
Our mighty hero
And save him we did
Guns barking death at our rivals
'Til only blood was left.

Sickening - A poem by Adam White

Drip, drips, sticky, sticks to the skin and makes me feel sick
Sickening, pale and stricken turning a sickly green as I sicken.
Six drops, I'm surrounded by six little trickling lines tricking my mind
So it's quickening and I can't stick to this cyclical embittering lifestyle,
Sitting alone in a simmering, streak covered shit hole of a place
Wrapped in cellophane, suffering, shivering, shifting unconsciously,

Eyes unshining, the sheen faded shaded by everything
So it seems slick, sleek oil black and bleak as a British morning.
That morning. As shiny as sheet glass unshattering to me
As new as any shallow, unresolved memory can be.
And as sticky, as sickening as a faded remembrance
I faced in a time of such unshakable defeat.

But I wait for providence to slap me into consciousness
Cruelly and carefully out of kindness, but she does not come.
I'm forgotten or invisible. Below her fickle notice
As I wait and struggle, as I squirm and scream
In equal measure and in singular silence,
Solemn, sitting, sickening, sad and alone.

Udulo's Rise 1.2 (probably) - The Past

Read part 1.1 http://poetrybyadamwhite.blogspot.com/2010/09/udulos-rise-11-drop.html

This is probably the second 16 lines but it's all over the place right now! Have aout 30 of these written. Tell me what you think.

The vengeance he was born out of out in the darkness,
Out at the darkest corners where his father toiled.
Where his mother eked out some kind of awful life
So distant that he can not or will not recall.
Only the memory of their rictus masks remains
And the trauma that followed the night the raiders came,
As, terrified, he was bundled up in blankets
And hidden, weeping, underneath his parents bed.
He heard... the things he heard... his mother's agony.
His father's fighting in vain against these... bastards!
These bastards who left his parents raped and bloody,
beaten, bruised and then battered into an early death.
Just eight years old and innocence lost as he held them,
Their broken bodies, for three long days, huddled close
Against their cold naked skin before rescue came
And tore him cruelly from that final, fatal, embrace.