The September Chosen Poet is Timothy C. Hobbs

Please feel free to email Timothy at: timhobbs1950@cs.com

GHOST DANCING

Is that her heart I hear?
Filling my room full of night,
Filling my room with the light of a colder moon?

Maddening its melody,
Its haunted wail of loneliness and despair
In search of warmth and hunger for my flesh,
Yearning for the fury of an embrace.

Failing, it flees on a rush of midnight air
And hurries into the austere night.
I follow as if escorted by a dreamer,
Moved only by the power of loss,
The emptiness nestled in my cold breast.

I glide behind the echoes of her beating heart,
My naked feet damp against the cold earth,
My breath cloudy and spectral before me
As it beckons me to follow.

And There! Behold!
The morning mist has fashioned her!
Oh Ghost, Oh Phantom
Whose face is that of my love,
Whose eyes pearled with dew
Stare at me from her other world!

She drifts to me,
The wetness of the dawn that is her mouth
Covers mine with icy passion,
Passion that defies the grave, the dankness of the earth.

We dance beneath the melody of the setting moon.
We sway across the very fabric of grief, of pain,
And grasp one another in desperation
To bridge the limits of the flesh.

Then, the mist is gone,
Dispersed by the first rays of morning light.
I embrace the emptiness as a faint, cruel whisper
Tells me she was only a phantom,
A ghost dancing with the eternal ache that is my soul.

RHAPSODY

The night wind played a rhapsody
Upon the frosted autumn trees.
It fiddled on their twisted limbs
And danced along their icy leaves.

Crossing over my window sill
It played awhile on me,
Then swept me through the midnight air
To gaze upon dark fantasies.

The owls were flying low tonight
Above a crooked bridge
As the swollen moon kept vigil
From its golden crested ridge.

I journeyed in the shadowed gloom
And settled soon where they had lain
My life, my love, my precious dear
Beneath the bitter clay.

Grief in me arose anew
As it had been but six sad days
Since the harbinger of doom had called
And snatched my wife away.

The earth above her grave then stirred,
A moan rode on the wind.
Not a moan of love or peace,
But one of hunger deep within.

My cherished bride rose from her grave
And stretched pale arms out to me,
Her crimson lips then opened wide
With wolfish teeth for me to see.

“Come and stand with me, my love,” she groaned.
“And let me kiss you once again.
Be mine tonight then eternally
We’ll slake our thirst with the sweetest red.”

This horror that confronted me,
I could not flee or make a stand,
She clasped me to her chilly breast
And stroked my golden wedding band.

She licked my throat with serpent’s tongue
And bore the fangs that plunged so deep
Then feasted while the night wind sang
My soul to its retreat.

The night wind plays a rhapsody
Around my new found home,
My bride and I find such delight
In licking clean our children’s bones.

Love, love, it’s many things.
It’s tiger eyes or angel wings.
It’s calm or tempestuous weather but,
It’s best when spent together.

NOCTURNE

She emerges from a frosted mist,
A bitter moth dancing on the breath of night.
Hunger summons her from the damp of the grave,
Bears her in a soiled, linen dress
To satisfy my yearning for eternity.

Whispering of obsidian pools
Where stars shimmer beneath melancholy waters
She guides her feline tongue across my throat,
Presses cold, pale breasts against me.

She feeds and the mournful cry
Of a night bird dances through
The open window with a nocturne
For my restless soul.

Timothy C. Hobbs is a retired medical technologist living in Temple, Texas. He has had short stories and poems published in New Texas, an annual literary collection of Texas writers, a short story and flash fiction piece in Dark Tales, a U.K. publication, and a short story in Spinetingler, an on-line Canadian magazine. His story “Moon in Submergence” was published in the 2013 Sirens Call Publications anthology Fear of Water. A flash fiction piece, “Luna” was published in the spring 2014 edition of the Deep Water Literary Journal. His short story collection Mothertrucker and Other Stories and a novel Veils were published. His novels The Pumpkin Seed and Music Box Sonata, and a novella The Smell of Ginger, were published by Vamplit Publishing in the United Kingdom and recently republished by Visionary Press Collaborative. Netherworld Books in the United Kingdom published his novel Maiden Fair in 2013. A novella, ED, was published in 2014 by Visionary Press. A collection of flash and short fiction, In the Blink of a Wicked Eye, was published March 2015 by Sirens Call Publications. Mr. Hobbs’ author page can be viewed HERE