[Erik Olson]

All I have is one dark piece with supernatural spooks, with Demons (or Daimons, or Dæmons, which is it?)

The Subway Arm

A man finds, pushing through the rout,
the subway gorged with bodies when
the doors snap shut and block him out
but for one arm, ensnared within.

The arm protrudes, takes time to breathe
till doors part. But the train, instead,
locks the arm in its wanton teeth
and lopes across the track ahead,
the man in a stumbling waltz with doubt
dragged along the platform getting weary,
as fingers of the arm grope out
amid a shrieking aviary
of flushed commuters. As the vast
dark tunnel’s throat is drawing near,
the arm slides down the doors at last
and is observed to disappear.
Though whether from perseverance or
a frame knocking the wall combined,
whether marred by a conductor
woke at the loud thump from behind
or saved by claws of demons quick
to jest for sneers, none tell whose trick.
c

[RCL]

Every night’s unhallowed eve!


Shadow Bears

They crowd into my yard some nights,
cavort beneath the moon. But play
soon shifts to snarling, bloody fights.
When reconciled, they claw a way
inside the house and find my room.
It’s locked. Enraged, they bellow, score
the threshold of my lair—and loom
as pounding paws collapse the door.
Fighting to keep the beasts at bay,
I shrink from growling jaws that reek
of feral feasts, and softly pray,
fearing what these monsters seek.
At dawn, I struggle to all fours,
my burning eyes too weak to see—
but know there are no lockable doors
between the shadow bears and me.

[David Anthony]

Cracking and subtly weird poems on this neglected thread. I shall add one of mine.

[David Anthony]

A cry cut through the winter’s wind. “Who died?”
the student asked, his focus far away
from college friends who’d just arrived to stay.
“Poor Hywel Jones”, his grandmother replied.

The guests had read of spirits that abide
in Celtic lands - those keening wraiths who stray
when souls are crossing - and they felt the fey
forebodings carried where the cold wind cried.

Across the road a carpenter once more
bent to his task. The same old man who made
cots for the babies, built a thing to hold
no hope, no future. As his power saw
began to turn again, its cutting blade
bewailed an ending and the wind blew cold.