Scattered Voices: A Collection of Poems Shared by Strangers on the Internet

One internet post. Ten Poets. Less than thirty days.

Read an unlikely collection of poems submitted by users of a certain social networking site. A diversity of voices communicating on a range of topics through the art of verse. Brought to you by an even more unlikely source, Rotting Horse Publishing.

A house of horror delivers its most unexpected work yet. No blood or boogeymen needed to tell this story.

The story of us.

#ScatteredVoices

Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Scattered-Voices-Collection-Strangers-Internet/dp/1500142840

Kishar’s Wonders

Left in the dark, this dimming
globe, shelled violently,
with this expelled lump
hovering close. The lost lover.

Time mollifies the red anger,
before the Gods discover
the blue pearl, diving in
for a swim, resting their lazy bones.

Their dirt and flakes of skin sink
into the black smokers, a trigger,
the catalyst, a movement, the awakening.
Yet, evanescent as Gods are…

But there slowly, unseen brew Natura
with its essential qualities, its disposition
irrevocably innate “; a literal birth,
while the winds and rain drew the mountains.

While the sun was welcomed in shallow waters
While cells merged and moved and crawled
While land turn green, slowly mists fed it
While colorful invitations drew insects

While the hunters laid lazily in the tall grass
While the splash of the ocean ground the rocks
While fish schooled and deer lashed
While men awoke with questions, in awe

While the stars burned, died and stole all the light
While all that happened, the Gods looked back
and in amazement smiled at what their bath had drawn:
the most fragile dot emerged in endlessness.

© Casteleijn MG. 2020

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The image is the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers.

Swimming in the dark

Down the hill, pasted the trees, lies the lake.
Ripples follow the fickle winds, drawn all over.
The warm glow in the bitter sky bites deep
into the far side, rounded at the free end.

From this vista, there was no compromise
on a purview, no misconception nor ignorance.
A moth ticked the glass, eager to halt concern
over such unpredictable things, just in awe.

Yet, ungraspable out of reach was understanding
of such senseless things, vendettas sprinkled
with exclusivity. Until you talked to others,
who went thought it. Through the darkest pain.

And the lake stares back, inviting, indifferent.

Magnifying.

 

 

Casteleijn M.G. © 2020.

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Image: Casteleijn M.G. © 2020.

 

Asymmetric flow

Peeled back, these covers
once unveiled such a smooth
surface scantily. Clad in rags,
shredded cotton over mildew,
sinewy, yet still strong, somehow
sensual, it all endures.

Scraped off, this white film
unveils a cracked, pitted
surface, once teal, of a faded
green. Somehow, these tiles
hold back murky waters, which
the savior silently assures.

Shrunk, wrinkled this casing
once held on to a curious smooth
tannin taste, now just sprinkled
on morning porridge. The noble
grape once was only for the affluent,
now fake candy, horrid lures.

So we reflect our visage, yet pray
we do not get lost in this gaze
bouncing of the silvered surface,
such fragile glass once was mighty
a mountain, then sand, by time worn.
A future by infinity obscured.

© Casteleijn MG. 2019-2020

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Amazing image by: AGOSTINO ARRIVABENE

Contentious clown show

Humankind
Holds its breath
Disheartened

They drew a
circle, a
borderline.

I cannot
breathe. Cannot
comprehend.

(c) Casteleijn MG. 2020

#blacklivesmatter #stopkilling

Of the Bride’s Moans

While the light beyond the crack
around the wooden window cover
dies

While Šerida takes her husband’s
hand into where horizon’s privacy
lies

While even the bleating of goats
or child sinks into the silent dessert
sands

While the cooling blanket dims
all shadows into dense ethereal
demands

While far beyond understanding
the bride’s noises travel with her
sheen

There in Nanna’s silvered plane
outside the mud brick wall’s
scene

There shivering under the dying
moon and void of all energy thus
drawn.

There trembling on horizon’s edge
the heat of Utu’s bride
groans

There

builds the silence before dawn.

(c) Casteleijn MG. 2019

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Awesome image from Zdzisław Beksiński, Surreal Landscape (1982)

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Some are hunted and some are hunters. Others will find only the Beginning of beginnings to be comforting…