Three new Poems. Read and/or suffer.

[Flippy_D]

Rattenberg*

Dark crystal town
Baptized in shade.
You spent half a year dead again.

The cats trickled through the empty streets,
Past shuttered windows, framed doors,
Bathed in dull twilight.

Is it good to be home?
Suitcase handle pressed into damp palm,
Greeted by silence whilst the old folk
Lie staring at electric fans
Behind painted doors.

________________________________________________
One-shot

I like my veins.
They wind around me magnificently;
Thick as twisted silk,
Organic like coral.

Fizz Latin Injection Orange.

So much syrup…!
Drips slowly through the passages and pathways.
Hot like tabasco,
Or the glitter of Indian's Ocean,
Or the mist over Japan,
Or the
I don't think I

________________________________________________
Antiquity

Van Der Maäl sits clawed in a high-backed chair,
With a purple gown and oiled hair,
And holds up a candle against the encroaching dark.

The shadow seeps, bursts, breathes forth misty
Opulant colours in a fragmented rush,
And heels click like bones over the black and white tiles,
All laid out for Society's Game.
Somewhere blank a glass tinkles and smashes,
Rolls like a shining splintered crab,
Cackles like dice.
Just like a game.

Van Der Maäl, Mally to friends, or sudden allies,
Slithered through Rank and file
With a pearl-slab grin, and a vintage tipped in hand. Like so.
…Wreathed through suits and silk, left trails:
Sidelong looks, blushes, frowns.
Swept along with coat-tails streaming.
His subtle scheming.
A grand game for the gentleman.

Tipped conversations, ruined intimacies,
Played the guests,
Moved,
Sat like a spider thronged with the hum,
The web,
His life.
Just a game.

There is the echo of a crack.
Van Der Maäl sits in his alcoholic dust
With an insignificant beard.
In the distance of the long, cold hall
The glass evaporates into memory.

He twists a ring on his finger, given, donated by some girl,
A nameless one.
His face contorts.
The Bachelor dies.
And the shadows rush in to feast upon him.

________________________________________________

*Rattenberg is a small town in Austria which spends half of the year out of the light due to a really, really large mountain in the way of the low winter path of the sun.

[Peter Thomas]

I think Antiquity is an excellent piece. Its rhythm and its message are both beautiful. You've captured a very real, raw thing here. The only thing I didn't quite get was the line "Cackles like dice." Maybe I'm missing something here - a reference to some other sort of dice, maybe(?), I've just never seen typical rolling dice cackle. Nitpicky perhaps, but it distracted me sufficiently to include here...

Ratternberg has a lot of pretty imagery in it. Especially the last 3 lines. I can totally picture that. Unfortunately it just didn't meant a lot to me, personally, since I've never heard of this place before, nor seen pictures, nor met people from it. Well, at least, not that I know about. But for pure imagery it did the job very well.

One-shot is probably very clever, however it freaked me out just a little too much, so I'll shut up. I've seen some pretty graphic things happen to my friends, and that poem's uncomfortably real. A fantastic shock to the system.

[Mr_Frisby]

One-Shot is my fave. I like the way it just burst out of the serenity of the first passage. Plus -"The wind around me magnificently;Thick as twisted silk," is probably one of the best descriptives I have heard in ages.
The others are cool to btw.

[Flippy_D]

Hot friskies, I didn't realise I had omitted the 'y' on 'they'. Thanks for bringing that -how inadvertantly - to my attention.

*Goes around fixing it in about six different places*

Thanks for the feedback, these three have generally been very positive, which I guess can only be a good thing.