The November Featured Poet is

Ronald Shortt

Please feel free to email Ron at: ron_shortt@live.com

SPILL HER

All around, they’re all wearing masks.
I’m not sure where I am.
Knee deep in purple water,
The fog is shifting.
They won’t take off their masks.
Death masks.

I think I’m dreaming but I might already be gone.
The tower is high in the dark sky.
The water is calm.
I’m afraid to change it.
I’m afraid to walk away.
Yet I see her in the window glowing like a midnight star.

They try to catch my arms as I break the circle.
I feel their ghost fingers reach in to my bone.
I’m not scared anymore she’s too beautiful to watch.
I smell the rotten leaves and gloom flowers,
On the stone steps they clutter, I run like time existed.

A black and velvet puce marshland lingers behind,
Holding the misfits of time and they frown.

I made it up into her chamber the candelabra lit
Bringing to life paintings of heaven on the walls.
She smiled.
And I grew nervous.
She might fall leaning to far out the window.
I went to grab her,
I never felt her flesh.
For so soon it became water
As I slipped out and far down…

I woke up and we stood around her.
She looked scared yet when she’d seen him in the window
She could not resist the beauty.
She left our circle and would soon join us.

CEMETERY PRAYER

For gravestones only mark bones
And love is never to part
From the sole existence of those left behind

Mankind lingers in wonder of afterlife

And knowledge of true death would shatter souls to madness
Forever leaving them to pine
In the gloom of days without end
Of times without the hourglass

Let the prayer stay within the gates and never beyond
Let them be heard and answered
With the pulse of a life still to go on

For until it is our time we shall ever remain human to our shells

REQUIEM FOR A LOST LOVE

And here I am
Sitting next to your coffin

Alone at your wake in the last moments we have
Listening to old records
Remembering old times

Once we were so alive
True friends and lovers at heart
Caught in the summer breeze
Playing and dancing

Holding hands then kissing

The taste of honeysuckles linger on my tongue
The scent of daffodils bring tears to my eyes

A strong nostalgia burns for all that was and never will be

These photographs catch your smiles in life…
Your hair the color of autumn leaves
With eyes painted green and candy apple,
Red stained lips outlined in moon lit skin

Together in your all and ever,
My lost treasure
Your beauty I can not measure

The memories they haunt me now till death

Your laugh, the passionate soul that echoes in the past
Your voice, the angel’s serenade that carries on in the wind
Gone forever, my soul longs for yours
I love you

FOR THOSE NEVER TO BE

It was a day well fit for peace and joy.
It was a gala ceremony.
Until I saw her among the crowd
In a maidens dress preened.
She was unfit for my mind.
Placing a harness upon my heart.
Stealing all my thoughts
On this day of peace and joy.

The seal had been broken
In my bounty of pride and promise.
I espied as a voyeur through boudoirs,
With my insides in vertigo.
I prayed for a night with her.
Though never would the forbidding twilight
Touch our skins as one,
In a silk and ivory paradise.

For who I am and who she is,
We are not meant to be.

So it was that I went out with the season sun
In a day undone.
Within this bower I choke
From the tears
I can not cry.
She ever remains the queen
Of all dreams to come.

Ronald Shortt was born in Salisbury, Maryland on October 14, 1986. He has been writing since his high school years. His only true ambition in life is to be a writer, although he has never attempted to become published until recently. This marks Ronald's first publication. Beyond poetry, Ronald truly loves to write short stories focusing on supernatural elements and the horror of the human condition among other topics.

He currently resides on the eastern shore of Maryland where he was born, but has been traveling and living in different places since 2005. Ronald has lived in Florida, Colorado, and occasionally stays in Delaware.

Besides writing, Ronald enjoys listening to music, playing the piano, and ghost hunting which he claims the latter to be great research.