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Dave Sciuto

The July Featured Poet is Dave Sciuto

Please feel free to email Dave at: Dave_Sciuto@uml.edu

dve

VIOLENT BAMBOO

Narcisstic Belladonna in foxgloves, look lively!
Jerusalem’s Cherry laureled with Devil’s Ivy
Glide like shades of blackened Night
And pass between beams of Luna’s Light

Diva East’s mind, an oriental puzzle,
Bound, gagged, and muzzled
Tied to the gnarled tree of Nature’s gallows
And shot in vain with Sebastian’s arrows.

Evil’s fruit watched by writhing snakes
Polished to perfection by William Blake
Given to Adam and plucked by Eve
Lie lifeless and still beneath a poisoned tree.

Through the Garden’s prattle
The Violent Bamboo writhes
Weary from battle.
The moon moans and rattles
As it scrapes across the gun-metal sky.

Fairy light beyond the grove
A lighthouse beacon in a Devil’s Cove
Between the Bamboo boughs that part
To expose your thumping, thorny heart.

Windswept whispers from yonder grave
Sit with me in the grotto's darkest enclave
And converse in verses with the Dead below
My lover, in life, of long ago.

While through the Garden's prattle
The Violent Bamboo writhes
Weary from battle.
The moon moans and rattles
As it scrapes across the rusted sky.  

MY EPITAPH
(An inscription for my grave)

What once was
Shall never be
Again in life
But in memory

GRIMALKIN AND PLUTO

The nighttime cathedral pipes up with praise
Unto the heavens, with their voices raised
An Acapella choir chirps and croaks
Across the mossy aisles of oaks

Flickering candles now buzz and blink by
As if to mirror Michelangelo’s sky
Erewhile the radiance and ethereal mirth
Has fallen from heaven, and alighted on earth

Out of step, and perhaps time, feet scamper along
Amidst the clamor of nature’s soiree song.
For a moment, a sound silences their voice,
When darkened she-devils unwelcomingly foist

A whoosh up the aisle, they scatter dead leaves
Dragging out our late-comer, bloodied and bereaved
Into the vestibule, they divest and rent his remains
Joining along, in praise and song, the assembly’s last refrain

This Mass has ended,
In peace all may now go
While the blood moon drips, dripping
Onto the murky meadows below.

Dave Sciuto is a business and technology instructor and writer. With a lifelong passion for all facets of communication, he has also worked as a newspaper columnist and radio talk show co-host in the Greater Boston market. He holds a degree in English and Secondary Education and an MBA from UMass. He is currently a doctoral student researching teacher professional development communities in online social networks.

His favorite authors and poets include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, and HP Lovecraft. Among his favorite genres are horror, fantasy, and steampunk.

He lives in the small rural town of Dunstable, Massachusetts, once the temporary home of the Revend Samuel Parris, the ousted minister of the Salem Witch Trials fame. He makes his country home with his beautiful wife, Mary, their dog, Darcy, and cat, Kiddy. He can be contacted through his website, poeticGoth.com, or on twitter on @davesciuto.