a literary magazine.
Trolls, Shadow Grave
Trolls
Worship at the altar
of intoxicating smoke
is but folly, and galleying
to the ship of fools.
My devils are old pros;
they saw the burning
of Constantinople,
they laughed at the sinking
of Atlantis
and the stinking decadence
of every Empire since.
They'll make you weep iron filings
in the scrying mirror of self-hate.
Keep 'em bottled, in Solomon's crucible;
one guffaw, one smirk, and out they come
sharply parading in raiments of wit,
hilted with words best left unsaid.
The smoke of inspiration
is their bold incense,
the intoxication of mirth
their drug.
The kitchen of viciousness
is a quaint nunnery compared
to the mischief they conceal
and harbour for their delight.
When you thought you
had it flayed,
and with sharp tongue
played it smart,
a devil grabbed your willing ear,
and you thought you had me slain.
I threw you with a smile,
I murdered you with a wink;
you played your last card the Fool
and floundered in my devils' ink.
Shadow Grave
Let me be buried in accordance
with Maori custom,
my bones blessed by the Dog Priest
as I meet old stars in the barque of Ra.
It was only a glance, now gone;
that star, at my shoulder.
A reminder of the short span of life
compressed in a winding tapestry,
a canopy of threaded years, flickering
across ageless canvases of jeweled
night, a picture of my existence
unravelled upon a rotating wheel.
That star, a glimpse of light
caught in the Reaper's scythe
recalled a shallow grave on Black Craig.
My body never found, a single bullet
felled me like a stone.
What blood smeared the earth, stained black
crying the form and visage of Anubis?
A howl of desolation on the wind
searching the ground which covered my corpse;
what clue would betray this awful secret?
The murmuring dry grass scratched
winged words of the God's lament.
A rasping at the door; a note nailed in the wall;
an anxious sign seeking the messenger
who would dream I died and know
the meaning of its cry. Sound-sigils whispered
in the sleeping mind of a tohunga,
and he followed, dreaming, to their dark source.
Elegant in European attire
yet robed with his ancestral world,
he entombs the dead in pomp and mystery.
The God of Death, Lord of the Perfect Black
knows his own and inscribes him upon a tablet
with the ancient wisdom of Egypt.
Let me be buried in accordance
with Maori custom,
for they brought Egypt to these shores.
Bio:
Elizabeth Barton is an artist and poet from New Zealand with work featured in Pink Plastic House, Spillwords, Fevers of the Mind, Black Bough Poetry’s Rapture and Christmas/Winter Edition 2021, and the Hyacinth Review. A winner of the White Label Cinq poetry competition in 2020, she has a collection soon to be published with Hedgehog Poetry Press.