Yep, ’tis Tuesday “and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe…” or somesuch, according to Lewis Carrol.
Tuesday means it’s time for the annual #CoffinHop DEAD POETRY SLAM! Your chance to win some quality dark and dreary poetry by displaying your own mastery, or meager understanding, of the craft of the bards. We all of us, should love poetry – deeply, inherently, and with all of our essence – poetry is what music we make of Life goddammit. I’ve been writing poetry since I was 6 or 7 years old. Much of it awful and derivative, some of it pretty damned good, a couple of them even recognized as worthy of praise. All of them carried a little piece of my heart out into the world to bleed all over the carpet.
This year, we have an extra treat, as many of our #CoffinHop authors belong to a little dark poetry collective, known as The Kintsugi Poets Society. What is a Kintsugi Poets Society, you may well ask? Well here’s a little missive from their Lord and Master, Kim Koning:
Kim Koning founded the Kintsugi Poets Society in 2013. She had belonged to another dark poetry collective called the Undead Poets Society but sadly the Undead Poets Society returned to the graveyard. So in 2013 she decided to put together another dark poetry collective and The Kintsugi Poets Society was born. Pulling in a few fellow Undead Poets from the graveyard, she quickly began recruiting more dark poets who wanted a place and community to pen their dark thoughts. The Kintsugi Poets Society has become a thriving community of Dark Poets.
What is “Kintsugi”:
The story of KINTSUGI may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, launching Japanese craftsmen on a quest for a new form of repair that could make a broken piece look as good as new,
or better. Collectors became so enamored of the new art that some were accused of deliberately smashing valuable pottery so it could be repaired with the gold seams of kintsugi.
Kintsugi ~ That means “golden joinery” or “golden seams” in Japanese, and it refers to the art of fixing broken ceramics with a lacquer resin made to look like solid gold. Chances are, a vessel fixed by kintsugi will look more gorgeous, and more precious, than before it was fractured.
The poetry shared by The Kintsugi Poetry Society is written by poets who have mastered the art of Kintsugi. Each poet has taken the dark, cracked and broken fragments of their own pain and turned them into golden seams of light.
Which is all pretty goddamn cool, if you ask me.
Speaking of Japanesey Poetreezee, I was out at many long-waited appointments with Miz Liz and the boyos yesterday, and The Koj and I had a little Haiku match of our own. So here is #1 son’s amazing offering for this year’s board of fare.
Disturbing noises Creeping Monsters are stirring Halloween is hereHe’s freaking NINE. When I was nine, my poems were, like “Life is a bowlful of cherry pez. Eat em all and you’ll be dedz”. He is a brilliant little bugger. Must get it from his mama.
Here’s my retort:
Skeleton Forest Standing in supplication Gold death in moonlightMiz Liz had some awesome, and per usual, hilarious offerings as well. Hopefully she’ll post them here later.
IN ANY CASE,
Let’s have us a DEAD POETRY SLAM. Leave your short (or long, or whatevs) poems in the comments.
*I, Axel Howerton, and AxelHow.com, hereby decline any rights or reservations on any and all intellectual property shared upon this page, specifically in this post and it’s comments, that I have not created or posted myself, subject to individual copyright to each items original author* just to make you feel better.
The contest will run until Friday, when I will pick winners at random (names in hats kid of deal) for the plethora of prizes I have amassed, including eBook copies of Michelle Scalise’s The Manufacturer of Sorrow, (Michelle was just annouced as HWA’s Poet of the Month)Tom Picirilli’s Forgiving Judas, and Night Shade Vol. 1, put out by fellow Hoppers Katie M. John and Little Bird Publishing House (which just happens to feature a couple of my own dark poems. as well as some stuff by my ol’ pal and partner Red Tash), in addition to those fine tomes, I have also been gifted an eBook package by the beauteous poets of The Kintsugi Poets Society, including:
Part thriller, part crime-fiction, all supernatural horror, The Dark Horde tells of the return of an ancient evil that is neither stoppable nor comprehensible…
SO GET ON YOUR PALE HORSE AND RIDE! GIVE ME YOUR WORDS! PRAY! LET FLY THE PRECIOUS SONGS OF ALL SOULS TORTURED YEARNINGS AND LAY THEM UPON THIS PAGE!
For more info on The Kintsugi Poets and their group check out these links:
Got How? 
I’ll even start you off with a little ditty that just popped it’s lid:
In precious moments of broken slumber
When the veiled night falls into dreaming
And the true darkness emerges
Bright as your sins
Lit by lives once lost and loves been
When the skeletons dance and the nightmares sing
And the monsters reveal their faces
Here is the place where your own heart stops
to deliver you into dark places
The coffins are placed one by one in their rows
Each tenant still, cold and rotting
Awaiting the week of the month of the year
When the fiends and undead come a’Hopping
-Axel Howerton
Here’s a haibun poem from me:
A Night in the Cemetery
A quiet evening and a soft wind, where the wisps of dried leaves and dust waft gently. A full moon cracks the darkness that settled like soot on cobblestones. The graveyard silence drapes in beauty and gloom…
Cold, pallid—lost soul
waxen moonlight flickers across
bones rising from graves
Been a while since I wrote poetry… bit rusty. Here’s something that will inevitably happen to my jack-o-lantern, perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow, thanks to my living in LA:
On Carving a Pumpkin A Week Before Halloween in 80 Degree Heat
Your heavy head relieved
of veins and orange-matter and seeds,
and re-capped with stolen scalp—
empty, it does not bleed.
Your eyes open only
at the knife’s insistence;
you grin widely and breathe
for the first time in existence.
I’ve given you life.
In the dusky hue of night
your new-made face alights.
But in the baking heat of day,
your vacant grin, your eyeless sight,
grows over with mold and decay
and slowly rots away.
Awesome! I can always count on you, Jo!
Excellence! Thanks for sharing that, Anita!
THIS CONTEST RUNS UNTIL FRIDAY, BTW. So keep ’em coming!
Here’s one taken straight from “The Dark Horde”:
DARKNESS I AM
I am darkness, I am death.
I am light, I am the breath.
I am creation, all possibility.
I am destruction… Entropy.
I am your enemy, your darker twin,
The voice of evil, calling from within.
But I am outcast, I am hated.
Alone I have suffered, but I have waited.
Until the time, of my return,
To claim what is mine, the world to burn.
I bring you misery, insanity and rage.
I herald the beginning, of a dark new age.
You cannot resist me, for you are only man.
You cannot defeat me, nor understand.
On winds of revenge, my spirit flies free,
Merciless my power, to destroy all that be.
Every barrier broken, every chain, every ward,
Now feel the fury, of the Dark Horde.
I’ll bite. I only write “poetry” when I depressed or pissed off. 😀
Watch This and Learn
They scream endlessly
Foul and so obscene
Desperate wails of a twisted fate
Bemoaning the lack of compassion
Mother Earth’s denizens
Threw at them
With such unfeeling callousness!
Laughing at your idiocy
Shaking heads at your
Asinine behavior
Arrogant asses offer up
Their innermost selves
To exploitation
readily …
readily …
Slide in the wicked blade.
Gluttony rules
And you mindless fucks
Scramble to be Kings.
@RLT – YES!
@Brewin – Very nice, sir.
Okay I don’t really write poetry either, but I’ll bite.
Here’s a poem from my book 32 Seconds. And I’ll add to that.
Forget me not
Wherever you go
Memories are like daggers
And your heart holds the truth within.
Fear not the darkness
As the light of hope fills you whole
Step by step on the path of redemption
You’ll know which turn to take.
It is not easy to be you.
It is not easy to be anyone.
But with pain comes knowledge
And with change comes wonder.
Life is but a journey
Not a destination
And from the darkness you’ll grow wise
A loving soul, a caring heart, finding happiness at last.
Phew.
😉
Johanna aka The Manicheans
hmmm.. a lune for me
shadow-filled whispers
a voice in the dark
illuminates path ahead
I can’t rhyme or write poetry for my life, but I enjoyed your post and all the lovely poetry of those who commented before me. A lot of great poems!
Happy hopping!
Awesome, Ash Krafton!
I love it, Johanna!
#CoffinHop A Midnight Weary by richard lynn livesay
dark poets ponder in pits below ground
hang out with bodies in smelly alleys
live with the living dead, hell-bound
boots slosh through muddy bogs
where bats suck their necks at night
where shadows growl like rabid dogs
they write midnight blogs to sleep
dream of werewolves bloody paws
then snakes and spiders slowly creep
they wake to ghostly shadows lurking
then check the mirror for signs of madness
obsessed with horror they write, smirking
as the created zombies begin hopping
jump upon graveyard coffins stomping
(rising from the grave)
Ghostly Axel, covered in moss begins bopping
Reblogged this on Irina's Poetry Corner and commented:
Still time to join in the fun!
Thanks, Axel, for this opportunity to share. Here is “The Loss of Faith”
The Loss of Faith
Sister Faith had a horrible dream
her eyes opened wild and red
terrified, she coughed a muffled scream
and bolted naked from her bed
then barefoot fled down the frigid stairs
ashiver with unnameable dread
sinister voices wracked her head
murmuring madly “God is dead is dead is dead!”
moonlight lit the rusted spade
through the cracked glass door in the garden shed
she grabbed the shovel with arthritic hands
and through the open gate she made
deep into the forest glade
there below the burning stars that godforsaken night
she began to hack into the sod
digging with all her might
spooked above in the hickory tree
hoot owl took to flight, moaning low and eerily
but Faith could neither hear nor see
something dark possessed her brain
’til finally she felt no pain
doomed dreamer lost her earthly light
break of dawn dissolved the moon
the bellman rang the morning toll
that woke Father John for his daily stroll
six hours before the chimes of noon
he found the corpse crumpled in the hole
Sunday choir sang a funeral tune
Father John led prayers for her soul
sisters whispered and grieved in the hall
warm tears fell fast for the loss of Faith
sweet mentor to them all
that priest alone, saw satan’s smile engraved
upon her pasty face like a hideous wraith
and he pondered on her curious fate
what evil force would drive a nun
to crave such an awful end?
to hollow out her earthly grave
then to fall and freezing die
not knowing what or even why
impossible to comprehend
a year from her death on Halloween
the villagers say her ghost was seen
a wispy specter digging there
pale moonlight on her silver hair
spade in hand on bended knee
beneath the gnarled hickory tree
muttering an obscenity
dearest Edgar
we feel your pain
ravens scream
as dead hearts beat
and yet
my friend
your
collar’s white
your hair combed back
you sit upright
with fear
and hunger
you do write
your demons
haunt you
day and night
your cool shades
block out the light
keep you from
most ugly sights
but hear you this
my author dear
tis you
who spreads dark nights
of fear
your words
live on
though
you are gone
and ravens sing
your lonely song
These are all amazing!
Thanks for the Kintsugi Kudos Axel! 🙂
WooHoo!! Damn…I love me some Dead Poetry…
Will get back here to join in the poetic shenanigans later today.
I concur with you Oh might CoffinHop a Overlord: All fantastic poems here already!
– Kim
Bare feet trample,
undeterred by shredding thorns.
Heart beats louder
Pounding through her shaking form.
Howls grow closer
Something massive charges on.
One foot catches,
The body crashes down.
Hand is grasping,
only dead leaves to be found.
Heavy claws slash,
ripping , screaming, gushing blood.
Sight fades away,
Shouldn’t have gone to grandmother’s house.
I’m super chuffed I came back to read…great verses, all. Really captured the essence.