Poise

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo Day 8

Book cover for Walter Crane. A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden.

The poise with which
We must live life
Oft eclipsed by its strife
Is to embrace all
The Autumnal shades
As the wisest of us
Have eventually learned
It can’t always be Spring

Poetry inspired by the book cover for Walter Crane. A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden. London: Harper, 1899

Turning Time

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo Day 7

Book cover of Max Wolf. Die Milchstrasse.

Delicate cotton whispers
Caressing my lonely soul
With promises unspoken;
I sink deeper into slumber
Where my dreams are of
The stars, moon, and you.

If the Earth spins backwards
And Time turns anti-clockwise
Would you still wait for me
At the other side of midnight
Under the shooting stars
And the lonesome skies?

Poetry inspired by the book cover of Max Wolf. Die Milchstrasse. Leipzig : Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1908 — Source.

Addiction

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo Day 6

Book cover of The Magic of Science

Under the twilight sky
I spread my wings,
Beyond the haze of restrain
My mind melts like
Floating ice on sherbet
Under a pink moon
In a summer glaze
A resolve that breaks
A resilience that fails
Poison on the rocks
Trickles into nooks
Submerging my soul
In a golden liquid
Trying to soothe
With shallow intoxication
My drenched heart
That bleeds crimson!

Poetry inspired by the book cover of The Magic of Science: A Book of Amusements by A. Frederick Collins, New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1917.

Writer’s block

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo Day 5

All through the days so cold
I wanted to write
But the words had died
Slithering away in a whirlpool
Of frantic anxiety;

I stood at the threshold
Surrounded by the bellows of
Unrelenting stress and misery
I could barely stay afloat
Wallowing in fear and self-pity,

When they knocked at my door
I struggled to make sense
Of those jumbled letters.
So, I shut them all out –
Now no one will ever know
The stories those words told!

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Masquerade

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo Day 4

Book cover of Das unheimliche by Felix Schloemp Buch

Darkness whispered to me
Secrets from the ghastly depths
A smirk on her lips
A spectre of disdain
She laughed at my troubles
Amused at my failures.

“I saw it die a thousand deaths
Ages ago it heaved its last breath
Goodness is a cadaver
Goodwill a misnomer
It’s the time of the Black Serpent
Slithering on slippery slopes
In and out of its slimy scales;
Let me teach you the spells
From the bowels of hell
To charm Beings of the Night
For they are all that survived.”

I embrace the inky silhouette,
“My dark friend, I heed your advice.”
I summon them from within
Pettiness, dishonesty, slyness –
Throbbing, waiting to be spawned
I befriend the shady shadows
Blind like the bats betrothed
To deepest caverns and gallows
They tell me how to don a mask,
This masquerade I join with pride,
Of the deceitful who have thrived.

Poetry inspired by the book cover of Das unheimliche by Felix Schloemp Buch. Munich: Georg Mueller, 1914.