Category Archives: Gothic Grotesqueries

Gleefully Grim & Wilfully Wicked

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mixed mediaToast with a Time Limit

Here’s hoping the missing good cheer

That should have been prevalent here

Shows up at the door, not another old bore,

Or I’ll have to be leaving, my dear,

For your party is killing my joy

And particularly, to annoy

Me: wasting my time with dull boors is a crime

I’m not quick to forgive, my dear boy.photo

Coming-Uppance

Relegated to the lowest

Rank of feebleniks and fools,

I can see my betters’ failings

And their breaking of the rules,

But I keep my quiet counsel,

Counting nothing disconcerting,

Never flinch, for I remember:

Blackmail can be quite diverting!mixed media

Emptying the Vessel

Under my penitential veil,

Blue-socketed and ashy pale,

I genuflect and toll my faults,

Demurely dance a pious waltz;

I bend and bow and pine and scrape,

Dressed in hair shirts and chains and crape,

And when my guilt’s no longer sore,

I’ll dash right out and sin some more!photo

Close Shave

The opportunity occurs

So rarely, it is true,

That I can scarce resist the urge

To put my hands on you

With malediction in my heart

A glacier in my veins

A purring curse through smiling fangs

And voltage in my brains

That perks nefarious Nemeses

Like me to work your doom—

But I’d be left too much bereft:

No You to hate? Then, whom?

They Don’t Make Western Movies Like They Used to Make ‘Em . . .

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pen & ink

The End.

Those Big Death Scenes in Westerns

The slinger slung his monstrous gun

out of its well-oiled holster—

she tried to dart from the couch and run,

but he shot her through the bolster.

She tried to duck his second shot

and they got into a tussle—

it didn’t help her cause a lot:

he shot her in the bustle.

She staggered around; began to totter;

still the gunslinger came

relentlessly on and at last he got her—

right in the final frame.

pen & ink

Even though a cowboy’s socks can pretty much stand up on their own . . .

Something’s Afoot at the Fort

A Texas Ranger lost his boot

And all of us can feel

His pain at losing shaft and spur

And being down-at-heel

Without the custom stitching and

Tooled silver on the toe,

The steel shank inset and the vamp—

Where is a man to go

To get re-shod so perfectly

In style with stuff that wears

Like his cast-iron skillet, by

A boot-maker who cares

As deeply as the Ranger does

For quality and class?

I only hope the Ranger knows

That this pain, too, shall pass,

For down the street the Ponder shop

Has crocodile skin

And hand-tooled leather of all kinds

To tuck his tired hooves in,

And like a human’s farrier,

Will shoe him with perfection

In custom boots as soon as he

Gallops in that direction,

So go on, Texas Ranger, sir,

Get in and order boots

To save your poor hooves from their loss

In any style that suits,

From ostrich up to diamondback,

From white to black as soot,

And classy as a Cadillac

You wear upon your foot

pen & ink

Nothing can compare to the perfect boot . . .

O Death, Where is Thy Sting?

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As long as I can crack jokes about it, there can’t be anything gruesome or terrifying or unnerving at all about dying. I hope. (She said, winking and smiling slyly.)digital painting from a photograph

Pretty Little Graveyard

Pretty little graveyard,

How all your headstones gleam!

How delicate and marvelous

Your mausoleums seem!

It’s sweet and quaint and dainty,

The peaceful way you lie

Filled up with rotten corpses,

Under the sunny sky.digital collage

Funeral Arrangements

The way the flowers grew in shade,

I knew at once that one fine day

They’d make a funeral bouquet

All prearranged, as though pre-made

By funeral mutes in plumed top hats

And wearing bombazine black sashes,

Their pearly skin as pale as ashes,

Accompanied by coal-black cats

Between the funeral-wreathed front doors,

Their carriage drawn by sleek black steeds,

With passengers in widows’ weeds

As fitting as the hellebores’.

Whether Discomposed or Decomposing

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mixed media + digital imagePardon My Snoring

My lead-lined eyelids will insist it’s time to go to sleep,

So don’t be too insulted if I leave to count some sheep;

I find you fascinating and quite scintillating too,

So please don’t take it wrong if I should conk right out on you.

Your dazzling personality and brilliance are so bright

It pains me to, but go I must, and bid a fond Good-Night!

Pay no attention to the way I’m backing out the door,

And know your super-excellence could never be a bore.

I sigh, I yawn! But, for all that, it can’t be you that tires:

I’m sure it seldom happens that your audience expires!oil pastel on paper

Just be Glad You aren’t Starring in a 1950s Sci-Fi Movie

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We are, I am told, going to have a big, I mean BEEEEEEG, year for bugs here in last year’s drought country. And by bugs, I mean insects of the pesky and biting and stinging and flitting and I-won’t-even-post-pictures-of-them (you may thank me now, John, Teri, et al.) varieties, the ones that descend on the garden and leave it as a small quivering heap of dusty tendrils that give a last shudder and fall to the ground, dead. The ones that swarm around my head and ankles in grim, itch-inducing clouds of biblical proportions and leave me wanting to explode into equally lifeless dust.

acrylic on paper

Hello, Hell . . .

First we had a dry, hot year that sent a whole lot of bug-dom into hibernatory hiding. (Along with a whole lot of humanity ’round here.) Then there was this thing that purported to be winter but, in its temperate reality, was a very mild-mannered and brief cooling-off period during which the parched local world relaxed and the bugs began to feel quite welcome to reappear mighty early: mosquitoes bit me when I should have been wearing long underwear–though thankfully, not in my long-underwear regions, which would have been just too cruel for words. The return of rain here, which now to our astonishment puts much of Texas back on the plus side of normal precipitation levels and well out of drought status, was a regular engraved invitation to come and goof off at the spa, as far as the local insect population was concerned. Suddenly, flies are humming around in a leisurely landing approach to put their nasty feet and probosces on every morsel of goodness that appears, whether it’s a deliciously pretty bit of food on the table where I do not desire their company or the addition of their delicious crunch and protein to the dish, or it’s insecti-goodness of the garbage and compost varieties. Grubs and mandible-gnashers rolled out their equivalent of the heavy equipment and got down to serious work devouring tender green things left and right. And my quick walk across a grassy area acted like a strafing run in a bomber, sending up masses of craneflies like so much blasted, spiky shrapnel.

I have a special hatred for craneflies, I’ll admit, and for bugs that eat my plants or nip at my personage. I may be truly enamored of all sorts of crawly things as intriguing subjects at least when I’m safely insulated from actual contact with them, say with them in a nice tidy case in an insectarium at the zoo, or pinned on walls as magnificently weird and wonderful specimens in their pretty shadowbox frames. But when it comes to having them looping through the air in apparently aimless cartwheels that I happen to know are really going to have them fly directly down my windpipe or into my defenseless eye-bulbs or up there to nest in my hair or to burrow into my carotid and have a suck-fest on my life’s-blood (have I read too many outlandish horror stories? You be the judge)–well, I’m just not that live-and-let-live and forgiving a character, am I.

So I am arming myself with all sorts of anti-insect remedies, or things that purport to be so, and while I’m attempting with a certain modicum of ecological sensitivity to limit them to entirely natural and inoffensive and not widely toxic treatments, I can’t make any promises when I happen to see the first wave of evil bugs zeroing in on me and mine. It’s a matter of the hunter and the hunted, kill or be bugged. My general pursuit of happiness may have to take a backseat to pursuit of feisty insect vermin. There may be a few small detonations of either disturbed craneflies rocketing out of the lawn as I stroll, or of me spraying them with some wicked-sounding oil-soap-hot-pepper-nuclear-weapon spray intended to mortify and murder them in turn. There will certainly be skirmishes of all sorts. We are at war, sirs and mesdames, and I am not going to sit back and be antennae-whipped into submission without a fierce fight. My fight instinct is slightly higher than the flight one at this moment, so be prepared for bloody messages from the front. Here’s hoping that the message of victory isn’t delivered from Bug-topia. That would just be too tragic. Run for your lives!

acrylic on paper

Yikes! Head for the hills!

Phriendly Phantasms

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digital artwork + textGhost Images

Grey misty days, indigo nights and wind that whips up suddenly
without a seeming cause, are frights only to those who’d turn and flee
at provocations slim, and slightest hints of something shadowy

But I am not afraid of these faint shades and palely passing things,
instead, I wonder if they freeze in fear at me, these souls whose wings
are clipped, and on whose quaking knees are bent, to hide from mortal stings

We are, it seems, all fearfullest of that unlike what we know most,
what is familiar and best, no matter if it is a ghost
or is a friend at whose behest we once raised up our happy toast

Yet have forgot, when he is dead, and think we ought to fear him now
as though he were a cause for dread whom we once loved and would allow
was more than harmless, bless his head, and still should seek him anyhow

For company, remembered, gone, or living still, or even sheer,
transparent spirit of someone who longs enough to reappear
among us present ought to own our welcome without needless fear

The world we see and what we know are far from all that there can be,
and far from all that’s good, and so we ought to revel joyfully
when spirit friends or living, should seek out our simple company

So as the night begins to fall, or wind kick up, or day grow cold,
and chill our souls, hark to the call of friends quite new or ancient-old;
embrace their spirits one and all, and only happy tales be told

Both of those living or long fled, whether of days in blazing bright
sunshine, or seeming dark as dread, or else the middle of the night,
for all companions should be led to know they fill our hearts with light . . .

It’s All Downhill from Here

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colored pencilGhoulish Delight

I rustle my hands in taloned glee

Because the deadly recipe

From neither pots nor spoons nor pans

But sort of cauldron-cooked began

To boil and burble, burn and bake

And make a horrid bellyache

In which I openly rejoice

From the bottom of my heart at the top of my voice

Since it eats at the spot whence woe betides

I mean, my enemy’s insides

I hate to admit that it drives me nuts

How I loathe the cretin’s creepy guts

So I will make like a fleet of moles

And bore them full of a flock of holes

Filling me full of ironic glee

And comeuppance for him who so bores me

Since that’s why I really stayed in school

To grow up and be a bad little ghoul

And lest you forget yourself, sneer or scoff

Be nice to me or I’ll bump you offcolored pencil

So Soon Begins the End

Upon my word! This is a fix

I never thought to find me in–

at least not find for five or six

more decades, when my hair’d grown thin

and belly fat, and joints grown weak

and brain grown mushier than it had

been yet, but I age as we speak–

so rapidly–why, this is Bad!

I never dreamed that I would age

before a hundred years or so,

and then, at most, to turn more sage;

oh, this is a grubby way to go!

Sackcloth and Ashes

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graphite drawing

Contortionists all are we . . .

More Fun to Hate than Mediate

How we do love to boil our blood

And wrestle into controversy

Things that once were small and slight,

Warranting more, sure, our mercy

Than our spite or fear or ire,

But our desire to scream and swoon

Out-reaches wisdom to require

Tempests in every old teaspoon

graphite drawing

No amount of prettifying attempts can cover our darker selves . . .

 

Rough around the Edges

In the hearts of faithful men,

Sacred or not in path, a yen

For self-fulfillment will arise,

And if successful, choose a guise

Pretending prophethood and care,

Made up with clothes and wavy hair

And social graces and faint wealth,

To steal the souls of all by stealth;

Little is so rank and smelly

As to be a Machiavelli

Covered with the smooth veneer

Of love, charisma—to appear

Compassionate and selfless when

Inveigling your fellow men

Under a banner of religion—

Never was the night so Stygian

As when worlds were overthrown

Not for God’s sake but for men’s own,

And all while silkily insisting

Disagreement or resisting

Constitute cruelty and treason

Against goodness, faith and reason—

All while perpetrators ate

The fruits of conquest, greed and hate.

 

Not So Deadly Serious After All

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photoTerms of Interment

I’d like to twine my limbs among

great roots beneath an oak,

eternally embracing there

—but not before I croak.

I want my grave within a grove

of alders, at the least,

so plant me deeply in the trees

—but wait ‘til I’m deceased.photo

Cheer up; it could Happen to You

The shrinking shrubbery betrays the end-of-season, last of days,

that comes—enfin!—to suck and drub the lushness out from every shrub,

to make it sere and small and sharp, and leafless, stringy as a harp;

to drag the desiccation on until all fruitful life is gone,

and while it’s shrinking, to remind me salad days are left behind me;

so I, too, will shrink and shrivel: I’ll dry up, as all who live’ll.photo

Roland Stone Gathers Moss

Roland was a rascal

Roland was a scamp

Roland gave his children

A trip to summer camp

The neighbors thought it generous

But never did they guess

He moved away and left the kids

No forwarding address

The kids were smarter than he thought

And found him anyhow;

They gave him a nice funeral, though:

The joke’s on Roland now.

Don’t Blame Monday

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It’s true, I’m among the horde of cruel people who put the onus for all our Monday growling and grumpiness and grunge on the day itself. Many of us see Monday as the End of All Things Fun, coming as it does on the heels of any sort of weekend respite or recreation we might have enjoyed. I’ve long had that nasty habit of looking in the mirror on a Monday and seeing monstrous presence there, only thinly veiled by the black cloud of my ill-humor.P&II think perhaps it’s time to take a little responsibility for the ogrish attitudes myself and reclaim Monday as the Beginning of something fresh and new–by making it that, if need be, by force. The end of one thing is almost inevitably the beginning of another, and if the follower isn’t to my liking, then who’s to change that but me? Isn’t it just possible that in the open spaces between my crotchety complaints and snarky remarks, there could be room for the tiny wedge of reinvention to be driven in for a start? I think I should see what I can accomplish in this. No need to keep glowering at a meanie in the mirror morosely.P&IOne of the first things, I suppose, is to make sure that my Mondays hold something that I look forward to eagerly, something to start my week with a measure of pleasure. So I am taking that step in a small way already: Monday is my day for planning and for clearing the decks. As an inveterate list-maker and lister-of-lists, it’s my day to ‘walk the fences’–and since my Spread (no, dears, my Texas ranch, not my posterior measurements) consists of a house on a typical city-sized lot, it’s not too hard to accomplish that part, at least in temporal terms. But I must do so with eyes wide open for details that need attention so that I know of all the things that require mending, tending or improving. Those light switches that are going to be replaced. (The replacements have already been bought–check!–so it remains only to install them: Note!) The wood handles on the washtub need a preservative oiling. The seed starters are lined up as kits in the garage work area but need to be assembled now. And with the Must Do list is the ever-mutant list of how-abouts: would the window coverings in the reading/TV room be better insulation and easier to open and close if I redo them? Can I put a more comfortable seating angle on that chair by shimming the front legs? Do I have all of the supplies from my shopping list for finishing that little art project? Is the grocery list for Tuesday complete?

There is a surprising amount of satisfaction in not just being able to cross little things off those perpetual lists as Finished but being able, as well, to refine the remaining items so that they are more clear and purposeful and prioritized, and give shape to the rest of a busy week for me. It’s just the way I operate. It also makes me feel a little freer and lighter about what pleasurable things I can do while accomplishing my list-work, how I can distribute things in the short and long term, and when I can break up the flow of Projects with Fun–this latter being an essential thing and not, then, needing to feel like a disruption of the flow but rather a welcome island in the stream. Me, I like a wildly numerous and exotic archipelago of what others might admittedly think purposeless delights in my life’s flow.

So I am on a campaign of making Mondays a favorite day for me by turning my old attitude on its ear. I always had a fondness for forcing a change in point of view by whatever literalistic or foolish means necessary, after all: if I can’t see my artwork with enough objectivity to make intelligent editorial decisions about it, I need to shift how I look at it in order to adjust how I see it. Stand on my head. Come into a dark room and turn on the light on it suddenly. Imagine I’m a six- or ninety-six-year-old looking at it and how I’d describe it.

In the case of Mondays, I’m guessing many a 96-year-old with healthy feelings toward life would simply be delighted at being alive for another one. And six is an age when everything is still new every day, and electric with possibility. Why shouldn’t I adopt both of those attitudes?

P&IFor now, I intend to arrange at least one additional Fun Thing to be included in my Mondays on a regular basis, but perhaps a different kind of fun each time, so that I can’t get jaded and lackadaisical about it. Certainly it should have elements of silliness included, because that’s something that never does grow old with me, and perhaps is part of the reason I expect I shan’t grow old myself any too soon. Looking out my window, I see that the bare-branched trees of winter are suddenly covered with black lace, that the intermittent wind gusts have kicked up a ballet of curlicued oak leaves in the corner of the patio, and that the cardinals stopping by for a nibble of grain have somehow taken on a much deeper and brighter hue of red. Is it a change of seasons coming on? Perhaps it’s just that I’m letting the seasons change within me.