The Poetry Place

The Werewolf Librarian’s Love for the Moon

I wonder if this hunger comes from my true love
If my bloodlust longings will in death be resolved
If my virtuoso killings are sanctioned from above
If my fever dream visions in bookish vestibules
Divine how the moon and I shall be as one

In the gnarled witty ends of our Algonquin books
In doomed before Pilate bohemian looks
In dead arenas of career, in frittered down lives
In coiffured laughter therapy, in red satin smiles
These are my daylight librarian times

All my life I have lived these lives –
As my wolf self is hidden from book borrower eyes
I am that longing only murder satisfies
With order and precision I live my lie
I shelve books and wait till the Moon arrives

And Moon is my lover who makes Love bitter
For hers is the arena where innocents are butchered
And mine are the eyes that will see death forever
And these are my claws that clutch dead letters
As the night light metropolis howls in the emptiness

By Oran Ryan

Workhorse

Many times I came across you
as I rode out in winter,
alone with your driver,
flanks damp with sweat
from the heavy loads you pull;
nostrils blowing mist clouds
into the cold winter air.

Your grace and calm
belying your bulk;
a gentle giant
weaving in and out
of the trees,
massive hooves yet not a trace;
forests left intact.

Around a fire
your driver warming himself
with hot soup from a flask;
still you are by his side
blanketed and steaming,
your soft muzzle dipped in oats.

Your time is almost done,
machines have come,
belching their fuel,
ripping up the ground;
a forest disemboweled.

As I ride out now,
I turn my head in sadness,
hoping still,
for a glimpse through the trees
of your noble strength.

By Katharine Wheeler

In Love

On my Saint’s date this Angel was born,
Into a world of turbulence, quakes and scorn,
But with the flip of those eyelids over that deep blue sea,
Sent my heart to skip and fill the soul with glee.

When she spoke and looked through those big entrapping eyes,
The world folded in a box, the release from my demise,
Like the petal from a rose on a summer afternoon,
Her presence would ensure that many like me would swoon.

Such little faith in oneself, the torment cut like a knife,
When I knew others could have, but my love was my strife,
In tandem we battled, to keep the dream awake,
For if I woke to this void, there would be no sake,

On my Saints date, born was this unknown belle,
Wings unclipped and feathered, but nobody could tell,
Her beauty inside and out entrapped my mind and soul,
For I knew, should she find someone else, I would be left to console.

From the break of dawn to the end of the night,
My mind’s scourged with questions that all begin, ‘what might?’
For this presence she has in what I do and say,
This love is potent, without which I am gone, astray.

By Peter Mcloughlin