“On a Gravestone in Ireland: Died of Disappointment,” by Sandra Arnold

There is a terrific short piece by Sandra Arnold over at The Drabble.   You can find it right here:

On a Gravestone in Ireland: Died of Disappointment

 

 

 

“The Wounded Cavalier,” William Shakespeare Burton, 1855

Oil on canvas.

Burton,_William_Shakespeare-_The_Wounded_Cavalier

Throwback Thursday: Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” (1993)

This video happened across my Facebook newsfeed last night, and I just had to share it.  (I am linking here to the AlltimeBestRockMusic Facebook page.)  This is Hope Sandoval singing Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” live in California in 1994.  I can’t think of a song that better reminds me of being 21 again.

 

“Girl with Heart Balloon,” Banksy, 2002

London.

BANKSY_LONDON

Photo credit: By LYDIA and her SALAD DAYS (Flickr: BANKSY : LONDON) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s a windy, rainswept morning in Roanoke, Virginia.

So how about a poem about a windy, rainswept morning?

This Windy Morning,” by Eric Robert Nolan

The gales cry,
their sounds rise,
so strangely like
the wailing of children.
The gales
have ripped a rift in purgatory.

Along the low hill’s haze
and indistinct palette of grays,
the thinning slate shapes
are either columns of rain,
or a quorum of waifish wraiths.

Condemned but inculpable
are those little figures —
long ago natives maybe — in an ironic,
insufficient sacrament:
this obscuring rain’s
parody of baptism.

If that faultless chorus
should never see heaven,
they will ever be wind without end
their lamentations ever
shrill within rare
arriving spring downpours.
Always will the squall
imprison their calls.

You and I should refrain
any temptation to breach
these palisades of rain —
lest we be greeted by each
iron-colored countenance:
the sorrowing slim nickel
of an infant’s visage,
little boys’ graying faces,
the silvering eyes of the girls.

© 2017 Eric Robert Nolan

 

Rodrigo Paredes

Photo credit: By Rodrigo Paredes from Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Raindrops on the window) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Cover to “The New Yorker,” Edna Eicke, October 27th, 1945

14910357_10154149639303869_5768901940645434961_n

 

Tis’ the season.

You know which one I mean.  Halloween 2018 is advancing on us like a creeping black cat.  I hope you guys are getting into the spirit.  I know a lot of you are already way ahead of me.

I know Emily E. James is.  She spends most of her time being a first-class editor (you can find her website right here), but she also finds time for her own unique brand of truly macabre handmade Halloween decorations.  As you can see, she is a sublimely talented woman (albeit one who is quite mad).

Emily has an Etsy store for her creations in the works.  I’ll post it here when it becomes available — lest the little infernal monsters find and haunt me.

 

43569417_911402375730751_778430459821424640_n

IMG_37841

IMG_37831

“The Wounded Man,” Gustave Courbet, 1850

L'homme blessé

to be close – A Poem by Sam Rose

via to be close – A Poem by Sam Rose

Cover to “The X-Files: Season 10” #3, Carlos Valenzuela, 2013

IDW Publishing.

920148_10151214922958039_375819368_o

Nurse Your Favorite Heresies in Whispers