Goth Lit Crit

Weird tales, as a rule, aren’t that weird.
The wish for the strange cracks its ribs
With the strain of heaps of piled bones
In dark hours, but the bones don’t stir.

We’re weak. Our minds know it’s all weird,
The plain world en plein air, but how
Can we strip off the flesh of thought
To show the cracks in the bones bare?

We go at it in the worst way.
We boil down the meat of dull days
So it’s all black blood and grey shades,
Then we say, How weird it is! Pray!

We should paint in the light. Our minds
Should be left like spring lambs at play.
The germs are in the guts, the hawks
In the air. Wait. Wolves will be there.

The ‘Death and Stars’ Part

Thoughts that we know well,

As if they were stones

Or birds, homes or doors,

That aren’t in the world

At all—we’re all stuck

In rooms of these thoughts,

Not just our small dolls

We give name and place

And move here and there

So we can tell tales

Of them. All of us.

Look, here’s God. So sad,

So lost in the waste

And void. And there’s fact,

Which should not be here,

But of course is, but

Must be in here, too.

How else would we know,

In these rooms, what’s false

And what’s true? You know

Those stones, birds, homes, doors?

They’re no more than thoughts,

Real as stones, birds, homes

With doors. That’s s a door.

Child of the House You Built

But not for me.
Fate has not one
Thing to do with
This. You built it.

It leaked. You died
When fate shot you.
We should all start
Out like small parts

In films from which
We can quote lines—
You have no hope
But to say, yes,

From birth, from speech
At least, we knew
We were as good
As dead. Nice house.

To Burn a Lute to Cook a Crane

To write well or
At least at length
On what no one
Wants to waste time

Or a mind on,
Now that’s real waste,
That’s sauce from blood
Drained off a myth,

That’s this. Fred could
Burn lutes to cook
Cranes, but this just
Serves wood ash with brains.

Oh, it’s so dull
To read this poem.
Put it down. Gross.
Don’t play with bones.