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Alexis Child

The May Chosen Poet is Alexis Child

Please feel free to email Alexis at:

poetryempyrean@gmail.com

alexis

BROKEN FLOWERS

I am interrupted by a stranger’s shadow
picking patterns in chaos, tense as a violin
string under the unyielding weight of serotonin’s
symphony as the imperious conductor's baton
shivers and spins a whirling dervish of words,
screaming through my hair and blood, surging
wildly like a lash of electric bolts through skin.

The whipping wind of steel-and-hooves fight
against unbreakable bonds chaining him in mind.
Without rule over his spirit, he is broken down like
a city without walls. The obscured eyes of Jekyll
and Hyde fall into distinct darkness hiding the sun,
and only sudden exposure to light will spare our life.

QUEEN OF GHOSTS

The invisible queen wanders
Through the shades of time
Goddess of the dark hours
Visits another side of my nature
Haunting a three-way crossroad
An ebony moon struggles to shine
Drawing down silence like the sky
Evening fogs the wishing glass
Extinguishing your footsteps
Where are you now?

This night-wandering Hecate
Is desolate as a deserted city
Trailing in the dust
Ghost hounds of hell sharply howl
With the bleak souls of the dead
Owls sit forever watchful
Silent in flight
A carrion-smell in their nests
We are lead into the shadows
Awaiting the blood-wise mystery

The clock will chime and shriek at 12
Disturbing centuries of bleeding statues
The limping ghost
Yearns to hurry to its death
So that a tear shall change its mind
With eyes gleaming silver
As grey ghouls in the moonlight
Will you come to me at midnight?

BEGGAR’S CURSE

He managed to sneak in somehow through
the restaurant door. The resident filthy beggar,
I assumed. A gaunt, ragged scarecrow of a man,
tattered clothes hanging loose as the skin on his
face. He smelled of old sweat, booze and broken
dreams. Coughing and spitting, his mouth was
coated in a black substance as if he'd swallowed
tar or something alive that wanted out.

Dirty hands a tangled mess of bones and veins
desperately reached out as if controlled by one
thought: to keep himself alive. The beggar leaned
over to spit in my spaghetti, knowing I'd lose my
appetite and give him my food. But that wasn't
what he was after. There was something he wanted
me to have: a taste of fear. Venom dripped from
his cruel eyes, darkening in anger.

Deathly wounded, they had seen too much and
wanted me to see the truth in myself. His eyes
searched for my soul, burning into me, searing
my flesh, scraping against my heart. Bolting for
the door, I ran as much from him as from myself.
Those evil eyes would follow me into darkness
until the sacrifice was understood: he would
soothe my hidden scars by offering his own.

Alexis Child hails from Toronto, Canada where horror in its purest form is a calculated crime against both the aspirations of the soul and affections of the heart. She worked at a Call Crisis Centre, befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings, once lived with a Calico-cat child sleuthing all that went bump in the night, and is haunted by the memory of her cat.

Her fiction has been featured in The Official Fields of the Nephilim Site, SinisterCity, and U.K.’s Dark of Night Magazine. Her poetry has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including Aphelion, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Horror Zine and elsewhere.

Her first collection of poetry, a dark and sinister slice of the macabre gothic, horror, surreal, & supernatural—Devil in the Clock—is available on Amazon.

You can find her HERE