Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Dawn of The Dragons

Invictus

Beast Of A Different Burden

Sonbather

The Snowman

Beach House

REMINGTON GRAVES

Sometimes the slithering song of the siren would suddenly wake me from a feverish dream, calling from beyond the village; summoning  softly at first, then beckoning with brute force, her melody a murderous madness pulling me from sweaty sheets. The ocean in the distance sighed like an exhausted god. Glowing and watching, the moon with its battered countenance, would light the way outside my window. Hands lured me out in the shape of flowing curtains. Seagulls faintly screeched in the distance, reminding me of the sensation of sand between my toes.

 

I awoke naked and nervous, feeling as if someone was watching me, quietly, in the shadows of my room. Beads of sweat trickled down the center of my chest, and my feet cold and numb. I wanted to stand and run away, and quickly chuckled at the juvenile thought. I walked towards the window and wedged myself between the two curtains of my only window and beheld the night in all its glory. A gentle breeze lapped against my clammy flesh and a cold wave ran through my back down to my ankles.

 

“I see you,” I said quietly into the night.

“And I see you, ” she replied like the sound of creaking ships.

“Have you pulled me from my slumber? I was longing  for your call.”

“I hear you.”

“Will you sing me back to sleep?”

“I feel you.”

“Should I bring more than this aching body into your embrace?”

“I mourn you.”

“Why do you foreshadow signs of me forsaken?”

“I pity you.”

“But if pity arouses such sentiments with me in mind, shall I avoid this feigning apathy?”

“I need you.”

 

Wailing wraiths and witches  raptured, the fowl of the air, the crashing of half-awaken confusion, my skull, like sand beneath the beach, shifting its rippled shape as if another set of hands did call. An enticing elegance of all the things behind those shadows–shadows that must surely sing our deaths.

 

“I am coming to you,” I bellowed as I pressed on naked on cool sands.

 

“I know you are.”

 

“Will you envelop me between the rocks again?”

 

“Why would tonight be any different?”

 

∞

 

 

 

 

 

Black Lantern

REMINGTON GRAVES

She sat against the window with that old, tattered book in her hand; her mother’s dress, now hers, finally, folded and draped much like a Victorian nightmare, hissing as she situated herself from time to time. The pearl earring her father had given her for her seventh birthday dangled and cast a small shadow upon her neck due to the setting sun. The darkling thrush swirled and sang, chased each other with dips and dives; they seemed to supply the somber symphony for her evening musings. Quiet and still, quotidian and tenacious in her spell as she sat like a sphinx beholding beyond the bathos that the dusk delivered.

 

“Do you think one day a book can be a single page, mother? she asked gently while her index finger fiddled with her left earring.

“A single page? That would be no book at all, darling. Wouldn’t that be more like a very short story?” she said staring quizzically at strawberry-blonde locks her daughter had.

“What I mean is, one day a single page could contain hundreds of pages.”

“Hundreds? Darling…are you feeling well?”

“I am doing great, mother. Wouldn’t that be amazing? To simply touch this page and another appears in its stead…and light could come from this page so as to make it possible to read at night,” she uttered with a tender smile without turning away from the window.

“Silly, that’s what lanterns are for.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“But if you’re going to dream–”

“Dream big! In that case, this magic page could show us Papa’s face whenever he goes overseas.”

“Hilda, that’s just madness!”

“Oh, mother, it’s simply fun to think about it. But wouldn’t that be great?”

“Did you…is…this another one of your dreams?” she asked hesitantly hoping her daughter would turn to face her.

“Mother, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose.”

“Well, don’t forget we have quite a day tomorrow with all those stubborn cows. Get some rest, sweetie,” she said lifting her chin unknowingly as if that somehow would get her to finally turn and look at her, if only just once.

“Of course, mother. Good night,” she said gripping her book and gazing through the open window and staring at the world outside.

 

 

With that, she closed the door to her daughter’s bedroom and with a lantern in hand, walked gently to her bedroom and undressed. As she crawled into bed she released a deep exhale and blew out the light. From her window she could see the silhouette of three nooses in the distance underneath the almond tree.

“Please help her to get better, Father,I beg you. Have mercy on my child,” she whispered in a darkening room as she caressed her eyelids the way her mother used to when she was a child. “In the name of the father, the son…”

∞

 

 

 

 

Reflections

REMINGTON GRAVES

The reflection is mine…always mine

I walk through weeping willows

past large homes

homes I will never live in

 

Sounds trapped inside

of people and their things

I want to say I hear their muffled cries

but you and I both know that’s a lie

 

These summer nights…smell of whispering suicides…in lavender and orange blossoms disguised

These fading skies…beckon to mortal dreams…to bid them a long good night

 

My reflection sighs…now older and at times hard to recognize

as I walk amid large windows

silhouettes behind

curtains resembling her summer dress

 

And the poem keeps writing itself

the hard stuff cornered on the highest shelf

I am asleep

enshrouded in white sheets

 

I turn in the dark in bed

and there I am

my face enveloped

scarlet spots small then spreading

moving slowly

so so slowly

 

Somebody wake me

 

Before I wake myself

 

∞

 

Hello

REMINGTON GRAVES

01110111 01100101 01101100 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101111 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01101101 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010

 

 

Holy Shit

REMINGTON GRAVES

The neighborhood cats had all took their place and sat and watched me from a distance; the black one with yellow eyes, atop a roof cool and still; the yellow tattered puss purred and licked his paws next the broken fence; the white feline with fierce green eyes rested his dirty head on the hood of the car where he laid. Impervious to affection and inherently self-sufficient, these night crawlers had understood my nature..and I theirs: We trek alone, but may allow you the grace of our company if there be something beneficial for us. Satie’s Gnossiene no.3 came to mind as I lifted my hands at eye level and spread my fingers inspecting my nails. Cars drove through the spaces leaving blurred red traces. To think, I once believed in some kind of “Intelligent Design.” Some people need that, I suppose.

 

“Everything okay heeere, bud?” came a voice drunk in tone and scent.

“Fine, thank you,” I replied yanking my hands into my pocket.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, young man. I too shuffer from the occasional poetry of life.”

“No, I wasn’t–”

“I’ll tell you an interesting little shtory most people don’t know for a couple bucks. It’s in the Bible too. What do you say, buddy? A couple of bucks would really help get my whistle wet tonight.”

I beheld the grey in his beard and knew this man was all men…broken somehow, a wrong turn somewhere,  mental issues, perhaps. His eyes were jaundiced and the left side of his hair was flattened by whatever park bench fell prey to his sleep. “Why not, old-timer, why not.”

“Atta boy, I knew you had the daring eye of a gambler.”

“You got five minutes, man. Let’s have it.”

 

“It’s in the book of Ezekiel. God in his infinite wisdom orders the children of Israel to eat human poop.”

“Pardon?”

” ‘And thou shalt eat it as barely cakes, and thou…umm thourrr…shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the Lordy lorrrd said: Even thushhh shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, wither I will drive them.’ It’s in the book of Ezekiel, I’m telling you.”

“Are you sure you’re not embellishing?”

“Ezekiel being the big bitch that he was asked god to spare him and take pity on him and such and suuuch. So thy lord thy thou allowed him alone to bake his barley bread mixed with cow dung instead. Weasel.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“How do you know that story and why choose it over any other?”

“I am atoning out here…for my sins, I guess. I stopped believing a long time ago. But I continued to take from people and to feed them liiies. I justified it by telling myself there was no harm if it made them feel good, you know?”

 

“You were a part of a church?

“Kid, I was a pastor for a little over twenty years.”

“Is that true?!”

“Indeed it is,” he said taking the money I gave him, gave me a wink and walked away smiling and dragging his left foot.”

 

“Holy shit.”

∞

 

 

 

To The Heart Of Olympus

REMINGTON GRAVES

 

The reprieve left a trace in the treble of rejoicing 

a voice ascending slightly amid meadows blindly vulpine

designed seductively by hunters and gathered forth the dawn

 

lemon yellow water color bleeding through oscillating an insipid version of your vertigo

the delinquent orphan vitiated outline of a person set aside like sketch

the stains that played the sullen boy into a madman

has summoned the maternal images and translated them as joy

 

I was born a woman and fucked as a man wanting to be a child once again simply to love without restraint

without need to call it property or cage it like a victim

old ideas consecrated to the malady of selfish peace

a lofty pariah shortly thereafter seeking solace in the echoing lie that swept the world in the guise of romanticism

shoeless and small arms crossed deaf to the abandon

we say wane

the devil and the falling of winter rains

the showers fruitful and forthcoming

evil flowers bloom beyond their evil

as they earthquake severing already broken families

 

decades had to drain me before I understood

mountains no more desire to crush me than I wish them good will

leaves in fall

snow in late December

quiet creeks with flowing hair quenching thirsty broken stones

let me always do remember

 

now it has been quite some time  the old ways have tried and tried

 

fare thee well and if you care return a warm good bye

 

and so I go with soft crunching sounds in sand

far and blurring

in the shudder of the golden strand

plead and cry if you will

I’ll understand

I have set my controls for the heart of  the Olympus

∞

 

 

© 2025