THE PIPER

After viewing this entrancing artwork, the following words were carried to me upon the wind of evening, as light and as free as the dancing notes from the piper's flute.

THE PIPER

The piper plays her pale banshee notes,
Soft and shivering in silver elfin dusk,
And I am lost, a child alone in the darkness,
With only the silent white ravens of Faerie
To greet me, to come to me, or to take me back home.

THE MONASTERY

Time-slips are fascinating if baffling concepts, which I have utilised in this story poem. Although I haven’t stated it explicitly, I’m sure you’ll realise that instead of the monk being in the distant past (as the child narrating this poem assumes), in reality he is in the distant future, because the finding of the Cross after meeting the monk inspires the child to become a monk – the monk. In other words, the monk that the child meets is himself, as he will become in the future.

THE MONASTERY

One pleasant country afternoon
Through lonely woods I strolled,
When hazy mists began to fall
In swirling cloudy folds
And blinded every beam of light,
None penetrating through,
Until at last the mists dispersed,
And rose through skies of blue.

I looked around, and then I saw
A monastery, concealed
By glades of trees and tiny flowers
That edged each greening field.
A pretty garden lay all round
The monastery, so fair
With trees in blossom, budding flowers,
Whose sweet scent filled the air.

And high above, unseen by all,
A singing nightingale,
Whose liquid trills and lilting notes
Sailed through each wooded vale.
Sing sweetly, little philomel,
Bring happiness to all –
Shy minstrel of the dusky night,
Of silent eveningfall.

And through this garden walked a monk,
A prayer book in his hand.
He heard the nightingale, and smiled
To hear the merry band
Of feathered singers in the trees,
As thrushes joined the choir,
Till warbling music filled the air
As breezes sent it higher.

And velvet bumblebees buzzed near
Each nectar-brimming flower,
While gaily-spotted ladybirds
Flew by from bloom to bower.
And as he saw each tiny life,
The monk’s heart filled with joy,
As he remembered happy days
When he was once a boy –

A quiet boy who loved God’s works
Of beauty, true and mild.
And so his life he gave to God,
To seek our Lord’s paths mild.
But now he turned, and passed from sight
Beyond the shadowed trees,
And then another mist appeared,
Upon the evening breeze.

And when it lifted from my eyes,
The monastery had gone.
And as for garden, glades, and flowers,
Of these there now was none.
For all were ghosts from other times,
Those realms of glades and moss.
But then, beneath a grassy bower,
I spied a golden Cross –

The Cross that hung around the neck
Of that mild monk I saw.
A Sign that spanned the straits of Time
To lie on grass before
A silent child in country lanes
Whose youthful fears now thawed.
Yes, blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see the Lord.

THE HAUNTED COTTAGE

'The Country Cottage' (Sydney Currie)

Haunted houses are normally ten a penny, nothing special – but the ghost-associated cottage in this poem is very special, very different indeed, as you will discover…

THE HAUNTED COTTAGE

Deep in a green woodland vale wrapped in sunbeams
Stands a small cottage, alone and afar;
Windows still shining, transparent and lucent,
Each pane alight like a shimmering star.

Over the walls clings a shroud of green ivy,
Crisp arrowed leaves shot with yellowing veins;
Emerald spear-heads outsplayed in the sunlight,
Beaming and gleaming from warm noontide rain.

Briars glisten softly with wet, fragrant roses,
Sending forth beauty in sweet-scented bliss;
Each one half-opened as if still in slumber,
Waiting for Summer’s awakening kiss.

Swallows skim swiftly from chimney to gable,
Mazarine star-bolts with waistcoats of flame;
Aerial gymnasts each vaulting o’er cloudlets,
Chasing and racing in sky-diving games.

Spiders spin curtains of gossamer fabric,
Hanging serenely from windows and walls;
Light as the soft gauzy drapings of Faerie,
Murals suspended in Oberon’s halls.

Blossom drifts gently down over the cottage,
Apple and cherry cast far from above;
Fragile and fragrant it sails on the zephyr,
Borne on the wingtips of Nature’s warm love.

So it seems strange that this cottage is haunted –
For, if we enter its small shaded rooms,
Phantoms ne’er loom forth to frighten or mutter,
Nothing appears from the shadows and gloom.

But if we let this small cottage’s image
Out of our sight for a moment or less,
When we look back, we will search for it vainly –
For it has gone, we will have to confess.

Although no spectres appear in its bedrooms,
There is a phantom of which it can boast.
And its strange secret it holds to this day – for
This lonely cottage itself is the ghost.

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

The following poem owes its creation to a very curious snatch of conversation that I happened by chance to overhear one day on the radio, in which the speaker was contemplating whether it might be that many of the people that we casually pass by without interaction or see only from a distance are nothing more than ghosts, mere phantoms. And so, from this remarkable muse, sprang ‘Phantasia’ (constituting, incidentally, the longest single sentence to appear in any of my writings!).

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

Hear the echo of a lifetime
Doomed forever more to last,
Or a murmur drifting backwards
From the theatres of the past,

Whirling softly through a vortex
Spinning deep in silent Space
Like a whirlpool in the heavens,
Or an eye within a face

Gazing outwards, yet unseeing,
Pale as Dawn’s auroral birth
From the snowy dreams of slumber
Shrouding velvet, verdant Earth,

Like an unseen clock vibrating
As its lifetime ebbs away,
While its fingers trace the seconds
Of another unborn day

Through the silhouettes cast downwards
From the shadows of the stars,
Now a host of winging phantoms
From a distant world afar,

Flitting slowly through the evening
As the planets e’er rotate,
Each a windmill in a spiral
On a shining, spangled plate

Spinning outwards e’er to nowhere
In their orbit round their lord,
While lugubrious crescendos
Chase like half-forgotten chords

In a lonely helter-skelter
Through the avenues of Time;
They – the spheres’ eternal music –
Lacking syllables or rhyme,

Drifting downwards through the starlight
Lest their meaning fades away
To a ghost upon the moorlands
Of an evanescent day

Ever seeking ‘midst the future
For a future of its own,
As the souls of Past and Present
Soar like cloudlets to the throne

Of a duplicated kingdom
On Time’s unknown, farthest side,
Where their memory still lingers,
Round its universe to glide,

While they merge with more illusions –
None is real, for none can be
In this pseudo-world of Shadow
Cast from vacant Destiny

Like a set of footprints chasing
After footprints of their own,
Or a pool’s encircling ripples
Running rings around a stone;

Yet their messengers are present
In a hundred other lands,
Groping ever through their darkness
Like a metamorphic hand,

E’en within our crowded suburbs
‘Midst their noisy, raucous hosts,
Who could guess that most are shadows,
Mindless images, just ghosts?

THE VAMPIRE

Kiefer Sutherland in the cult vampire-biker movie 'The Lost Boys'

Just for a change, the following composition of mine does not feature in my book Star Steeds and Other Dreams. As you may know, highly-acclaimed graphic artist Andy Paciorek and I are planning various collaborations. One of these may result in a future book on supernatural entities of the night. Consequently, I'm currently preparing some samples of text for it, retelling these entities' legends and lore in lyrical prose. So here, in an exclusive preview, is one of them. I hope you enjoy it!


                                         THE VAMPIRE

Alone with the ghosts of days long departed, stretching back in silent homage, I dream that I am gazing into a looking glass and fancy that I see there, staring back out at me, a tall grim shadow, a wraith in human form that haunts my very being, chills my innermost essence with its dread pallid countenance, mesmerising and yet also captivating me with its icy doom. I have so many questions to ask this creature of darkness and night, I scarcely know where to begin.

Why do you and your kind exist?

“We exist to remind humanity that sometimes not even death can bring release from the evil that is nurtured in life. We exist to feed upon the fear that such realisation generates, to feed and grow stronger and wait.”

But why feed upon blood too?

“Blood is life, blood symbolises all that has dried up and long since disappeared from our shrivelled, exsanguinated existence. When we imbibe it, we are temporarily regenerated, rejuvenated, and reborn. For a short span of time, we are fully alive, even if only during the veiled hours of night. We may never feel the warmth of the sun, but we are sustained by the coolness of the moon and by the fire of the stars, nourishing and restoring us, empowering our living death with deathless life.”

I stand before this mirrored being of nightmare, and imagine with trembling electric horror its long slender fangs pressing so softly, imperceptibly, against my exposed neck, seeking the throbbing jugular beneath before sliding within, to freeze forever my existence with a single scarlet-trickling kiss of eternity.

Why?

“Life is fleeting, death is immortal. Those who become one of us shall persist forever.”

But what kind of existence will it be? Nothing but an undead, half-living, surely, surrounded by death but unable to find release.

“True enough, but that is the punishment for having lived an evil life. Only a stake or the burning caress of sunlight can end our torment, and then shall we decay and crumble, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, our long-postponed mortality finally upon us. Until then, we must linger, and hunger, and wonder…”

Only a dream, and a foolish, impossible dream at that. True, now that I am awake again I could indeed stand before the looking glass. Yet I know only too well that to do so would be futile, it would serve no purpose. How could I hope to elicit answers from my own reflection? After all, being a vampire I would have no reflection...

'Kiss' - Sue Woodlace(?), 1994

I'd very much like to include this wonderful artwork in a future publication of mine, so I've been trying to trace its artist for a very long time, ever since I purchased my numbered print of it, in fact, one Sunday afternoon in 1994 at the Sunday market formerly held regularly at the Holiday Wharf in Birmingham, England. I can't quite read her signature on the picture - her surname may be Woodlace, Woodlane, Woodlore, or even something else entirely! - but if anyone reading this blog has any information regarding her identity and/or current contact details, I'd love to hear from you! 

YESTERDAY'S STREET

My street of Yesterday, the subject of this poem, is a side street in Wednesbury, in the West Midlands, England, where my grandparents and great-aunts once lived in a small but lovely old house, and where I spent many happy days every year throughout my childhood and teenage years. Although they are all long departed now, whenever I walk down this street today – whether in reality or only in my mind – I never see it as it is, but only as it was – back in those far-off youthful days when it was home to those dear folk who loved me so much.

YESTERDAY'S STREET

Along that strangely silent street
Of Yesterday I strolled,
Where humble ragworts gaily tossed
Their joyful heads of gold
Above the gleaming wisps of grass
That peered through pavements worn,
Beneath the silken spiderwebs
Suspended old and torn
Between the ruddy bricks and slabs
Of broken tumbling walls -
Where oft I watched lithe centipedes
Laboriously crawl
On countless pairs of trembling legs,
As sparrows chattered long,
Or breathlessly in torrents poured
Out eager, scolding songs.

For here, a thriving neighbourhood
Survived through two World Wars,
And from its ceaseless gossiping
There never seemed a pause.
But all things end and soon are lost,
As progress marches on,
For Future has no time for Past,
Its ancient dreams far gone.
And as I watch, a pang vibrates
Within my beating heart,
That all my childhood dreams of Life
Should all too quickly part
Like curtains drifting back through Time,
Till, fading from my sight,
They pass fore’er from Memory
In dismal, clouded flight.

And as the leaves around my feet
In rustling dances whirl,
A tear runs slowly down my cheek
Like some reluctant pearl,
But as I gaze, my memories
Flood quickly back once more.
I see again a tiny house,
And watch its open door
Swing to, as phantoms from my past
Continue on their way,
All unaware of future worlds,
Of other, unborn days,
As like a rushing stream of ghosts
Each vision flashes by,
Recapturing their long-lost forms
Within my watching eye –

Like characters from fairy tales,
Now distant, far, and gone.
For like a living carousel
Our world moves ever on,
Till one fine day we’ll see again
Those kingdoms of our past,
And then, like they, as phantoms we
Forever more shall last,
Amidst the world that we knew best,
For all must fade and die,
And pass at last beyond the clear
Blue shadow of the sky.
And as I turn, a last farewell
Upon my ear is cast,
For still my dreams are haunted by
The murmurs of my past.

A GHOST FROM THE PAST

I owe not only my lifelong love of poetry but also my own inspiration to write poetry to this poem, which was a joint effort between myself and my mother. It began life as a school assignment at a time when I had yet to make any serious attempt at writing poetry. My mother wrote the outline of it, which I then expanded, and in so doing realised how much I was enjoying creating an original poem. And the rest, as they say, is history. The narrator of the poem is me, as a youngster; Mary-Rose is my mother, Mary Shuker; and the airman represents my mother’s first husband, a young RAF pilot called Harold Hooper, who died shortly after World War II ended, as a direct result of the war.

A GHOST FROM THE PAST

My friend and companion is dear Mary-Rose,

A great nature lover as everyone knows.

She travels with me over long country miles,

Through deep greening woodlands and over the stiles.

She took me one day to her favourite place,

The sun shining brightly, the wind in her face.

She suddenly looked sad, a lone tear on her nose,

And winds whispered softly of dear Mary-Rose.

She said: “My young husband, a long time ago,

Would always come here when his spirits were low.

He’ll never again come to this lovely spot,

Will never again feel the sun, oh so hot.”

And then she just smiled, and said: “Come on, young man,”

And into the dingle she laughed as she ran.

We’re going to watch birds, and excitement soon grows;

And a young airman whispers: “Goodbye, Mary-Rose”.

THE GHOST

When writing, I often find myself returning to certain themes and motifs – mirrors and reflections, shadows and phantoms, parallel worlds, the past and future uniting, solitude, silence, and God. All of these, and more, can be found here.

THE GHOST

Who stands ‘neath the eaves draped in shadows?
Who dwells ‘midst the darkness of Night?
Who calls with a whisper of pathos,
In sorrowful, meaningless flight?

“I stand – ‘midst the dusk of the evening;
I call – from the far side of Time;
I flit – ‘midst the valleys of Sadness,
Rhyme lacking in reasonless rhyme.

“I call – I alone, I unnoticed
In Morning’s pale sun-shadowed dawn.
I call – from the noontide’s bright wonder,
As I through all kingdoms am borne.

“I dwell ‘midst a grey world of Shadow
E’erlasting, past all mortal sight –
A parallel world, silhouetted
In pools’ depthless doorways of Light.

“And here you may see me reflected –
A phantom transparent in Space.
And in your eyes, Memory-painted,
Look inward to witness my face –

“A face from the Past and the Future,
Recaptured and borne into being –
A shadow – till stand I unblemished,
An infant before the All-Seeing.”

A LAST VISIT

Sometimes, not even death is the end…

A LAST VISIT

High above the greening woodlands,
In the alpine mountainlands,
Sat a tiny village church where
Dappled shadows lay in bands,

Sheltering the humble building
Where I passed one fleeting day,
Up the grassy slopes and hillside
To the clearing where it lay.

And inside, sweet hymns were floating
To the altar and the aisle,
Sung by unseen ghostly voices,
Hymn books rustled for a while,

Yellow pages, worn and battered,
Trembling in the cooling air,
And the stained-glass picture windows
Shone arched rainbows everywhere.

And when all was still and quiet
I moved out, and felt the breeze
Curling round the blooming flowers,
Bustling through the leafy trees.

All lay silent in the churchyard,
Each grave decked with blossoms bright,
And between them grew small snowdrops,
Heads bowed low with petals white.

And at one new grave two snowdrops
Stood and leaned, as if in prayer.
Both so small, but both so splendid,
As their forms shone everywhere.

Here I paused, leaned o’er, and softly
Read the name upon the stone.
Yet I felt no shock or wonder,
For I knew it was my own.

WELCOME TO 'STAR STEEDS AND OTHER DREAMS'!

Welcome to Star Steeds and Other Dreams - a blog devoted exclusively to my first published volume of poetry, entitled - yes, you've guessed it - Star Steeds and Other Dreams. Over the next days, weeks, and months, I'll be posting selections of my poetry here, which I hope that you will both read and enjoy. All feedback is very welcome.

If you wish to buy my book, which is 230 pages long and is ISBN 978-1-905723-40-9, it is readily available online from its publisher, CFZ Press of Bideford, Devon, UK at http://www.cfz.org.uk/ and also from such major literary websites as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, W H Smith, and sellers on AbeBooks to name but a few. You can also purchase a signed copy directly from me - please email me at karlshuker@aol.com for full details. Meanwhile, as a taster:

Enter a world of star steeds and nightingales, childhood’s end and silent farewells, realms of dreams and shadows, memory’s mirror and ghosts from the past, Faerie worlds and flying horses, the voice of the winds and the music of the spheres, roses and rainbows, airports, angels, balloons, butterflies, clowns, dragons, elves, fireworks, monasteries, poppies, Stonehenge, tattoos, UFOs, unicorns, and much much more. Even Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, makes an appearance.

All of these and many others too await your company within the pages of Star Steeds and Other Dreams, whose poems' themes range from the wonders of the natural world, and the mysteries of other worlds far beyond our comprehension, to deeply personal recollections and contemplations of my past, present, and future, my faith in God, and also a series of verses written especially for children. So let my celestial horse transport you right now to a magical, enchanting world that only poetry has the power to create, deep within the glorious infinity of our own imagination.