Three Spooky Sonnets
Hello friends,
Three spooky sonnets this week. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either The Robots of Babylon or my omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems).)
Alternatively, buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!
MARIONETTE (Alliterative Verse Shakespearean Sonnet)
A phantom in fabric, she fell from the attic
and slumped on the stairs. In my sudden dismay,
I dove like a devil — a desperate fanatic —
and picked up the puppet. I put it away.
A shiver then shook me — a shudder of doom.
By dusk I was drinking. The darkness grew fast
and with it I waited, till warmth left the room.
The corridors creaked, and the coldness amassed
a whistle of wind. Soon, a whispering came:
the vaguest of voices — evasive, a blur,
it levelled and lay, then at last gave its name....
I fell to the floor. It was fear. It was her.
“You left me alone — for too long.” Still, she clings.
I hold out my hands, but they’re held back by strings. BEDROOM (Petrarchan Sonnet)
Her portrait seemed contorted by the night:
Her gentle smile had straightened to a frown.
Her hair — by daylight, braids of blonde and brown —
had famished in the frame and fallen white.
To banish the illusion, kill the blight —
to remedy the lady in the gown
and see her form restored to its renown —
I dove beneath the sheets, to wait for light.
Alas, I couldn’t help but glance again —
and saw, once more, a visage not the same:
one sunken, grey with foul decay and dread....
I closed my eyes, but not for long: In vain,
they opened, to behold an empty frame —
and something’s shadow, passing by my bed.LILITH AND HADES (Palindrome-by-Word Shakespearean Sonnet)
“Rise, Lilith, see above the burning light!”
Skies hollow into empty, bleeding clouds.
Death purest, the revenge of weary night,
draws Hades where, below, the answer shrouds.
Breath steady, her resolve to follow snakes
roars measures she demands to ever hold:
Cold visions in opaque and fiery lakes;
lakes, fiery and opaque in visions cold.
“Hold ever to demands!” She measures roars.
Snakes follow, to resolve her steady breath.
Shrouds answer the Below, where Hades draws.
Night weary of revenge, the purest death;
clouds bleeding empty, into hollow skies;
light burning the Above — see Lilith rise!