Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits
(a sonnet)
What gift could the dead of the living want
if not to pour again the living's light,
that whiskey warming throats of dreams they haunt;
to sing, to laugh, to lose their drowning night.
My dead are old yet various and new,
the dancing sparks of a youth that ran away.
The love we had so tenuous and blue
flickers out the past and so transforms the clay;
but when you come you paralyze the soul
with heart-remembered cold like glacier melt;
a frozen thing so trapped by pure control
will feel the same negation we once felt.
Take back the miseries living in your eye.
Don't bring me where the sun forgets the sky.
October 2021
(with apologies to Poe and the entire 19th Century)
a little something for All Hallows, at dVerse Poets
Images: Styx, © Marius Lewandowski Fair Use
Author and title unknown, via the internet. Fair Use
Stay in your grave, dammit! *hits with shovel* Those moon-raised ghosties never want anything good, though they do dangle a good memory or two just to get you to come close enough to clutch at. Bury them at the crossroads I say, so that they won't walk.
ReplyDeleteThanks Shay. Yes, definitely at the crossroads, by bell book and candle, and coins on the eyes, six foot deep.
DeleteWith lines like these … ‘take back the miseries living in your eye. don’t bring me where the sun forgets the sky’ ~~ you are hereby excused from uttering apologies ever again. BOO.
ReplyDeleteHa! thank you Helen. It is almost Halloween after all.
DeleteGah! So. Freaking. Good. LOVE those closing lines - and every line before. Just wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry. So glad you liked it.
DeleteNo need to apologise, your sonnet would be right at home in the nineteenth century!Always enjoy your work...JIM
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jim. Loved yours.
Deleteand a sonnet. fantastic, as I sip a bourbon, the closest I get to a warm heart these days. ~
ReplyDeleteKnow what you mean. Thanks, M.
DeleteA spine-tingling sonnet: just fantastic!
ReplyDelete'the living's light,
that whiskey warming throats of dreams they haunt;' - Wow!
Thank you Ingrid.
DeleteMy dead are old yet various and new,
ReplyDeletethe dancing sparks of a youth that ran away.
Isn't that ever the way...conquer one dead place and others open right the hell up!
Loved it Joy!
Thanks, Mark. Good to see you here, and to read you, too.
DeleteWonderfully chilling - look out as graveyards whisper and spirits come hunting!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sonnet! As smooth as a single malt and those closing lines...wow!
ReplyDeleteYou had me with the first image and the first line!
ReplyDeleteI so love how you describe a haunting world in the poem, and then with the Volta you hit back... You inspire me to write sonnets again. All Hallows is a time to bring out both the darkness and the flickering lights that bring warmth.
ReplyDeleteThanks do much, Bjorn. Sonnets are alwsys challenging, but they often say things in a way nothing else does.
DeleteLovely rhyme and imagery, Hedgewitch. Such a great last line!
ReplyDelete