Voices in the Dark
How inconsequential are my human words?
It is the worms you should have cared for,
They guard your bones with their spineless might.
In the morning there was a word,
Whose tone tasted full-sorrow.
There is the maggot,
Each crunched leg spells my despair
And the crow laughs in the heart
Of unholy ecstasy.
What are syllables to the speechless black?
The language shaping tongue moves with a liquid grace
But human ears are too used to the deafening strokes of violence
And we, the abandoned majority, know the monotony of our grief
From womb to sepulchre like our first erection,
Do you know glory like a withered rose?
Are the eyeless dogs still panting into their eternal night?
The pale breath knows only the stabbings of loneliness,
And the Impenetrable night inside my laugh hides life.
The abandoned churches shall fall
And the dust of man will fill my children’s lungs
Until their stories shall not outlast one wolf’s howl.
Cut the single cord of violence
Cease and extend the rhythms of the rigid kiss,
Poetry weaves between bodies dark light,
It breaks against the wordless despair of a silence
That sets fire to houses.
I caught my 19 year old hand and laughed at the voiceless night
Worshiping the syllables of my living language,
I drank each perfumed sliver of evening;
And on the brink of loneliness
In a mausoleum full of eyes
I went further inside,
To know another human heart
To create autumn with a single utterance
To reverberate through the cut vein of darkness.
A crow dark as malice cries of the weathered grief,
And the sea of my granddad’s once impregnable years
Whispers back the black origin of words.
Beneath the Waves
Beneath the ocean Submerged in a cathedral of sorrows, A boy silent as eternity Kneels beside pews coated in seaweed. He prays, transfixed by the candles Burning through the salt blackness Delirious he dreams of redemption. Encircled by moss coated skulls Of fathers’ past Observing hollowly his fragile frame Kneeling at the base of his future years – Shadowed by the limits of candlelight. Ten years old and his skin Already feels uncomfortable, As if it is slowly not becoming his, ‘If I killed someone I’d go to prison.’ The Devil open eyed, Porcupine clawed Holds him firmly by the shoulder. Frost covers his flesh ‘God keep my soul safe.’ He mutters, Before the bitter silence reigns And the dark light pours Through the stained glass Illuminating nothing, Not even the boy Knelt in solitary prayer, Hearing voices rising in the dark. A Poetry Showcase from David Hay
David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and the poetry of John
Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, Nine Muses Poetry, Green Ink Poetry, Dodging the Rain, The Morning Star as well as The New River Press 2020 Anthology.
Fevers of the Mind 