The March Editor's Pick Poet is

John T. Carney

Please feel free to email John at: Jtimcarney@aol.com

THE VOICES OF YOSEMITE FALLS

Day dawned: bleak, gray, strange, surreal.
Twilight’s ghosts lifted their veils,
And gazed, star-eyed, into the morass of the Sun’s one fiery eye,
Their voices muttering the strange philosophies of madness,
Into the depths of my drowning mind and its endless current of shadows.

Above the bridge the great veil of Yosemite Falls,
Thundered down the sheer face of two towering drops of black and slippery rock,
And I wondered, vaguely, if you were there somewhere,
“Talking to me.”

Yet, all I could discern were Twilight’s ghosts,
Whom, with their murmuring voices,
Quickly faded into the crowding woods,
Which loomed to either side of the trail,
Around which the age-old trees,
Sentinels of our sorrows,
Conversed amidst twisted, gnarled boughs of Conspiracy.

As I headed back along the trail.
To “find you,”
I chanced upon a gentleman who seemed distracted as I was,
And asked him he was “all right.”

“Sure,” he replied. “My friends and I are here, practicing voice-throwing.
It goes on here all the time. Didn’t you know? This year you’re our target.
It’s something to do while we appear to be engaged in ordinary conversation.
Sorry we didn’t tell you. You see, then, what fun would that be?
We thought you might be upset.”

I kind of did a double take at that and blinked for a moment.
A moment of silence went by.

“No shit!” was all I could manage.

He looked at me for a moment with a kind of funny
“I hope you’re turned on by this too” look.

“Thanks for telling me what I need to know about this place,”
Was really all I could say in return,
“Now I know what I’m hearing”

“And by the way, I’m not upset,” I added, “Just “mad,”
But only in the strictest Freudian sense of that, though.”

He gave me a kind of funny look,
Before we both politely parted and went our separate ways.

And I had a funny thought about one of Robert Frost’s poems.
And wasn’t sure which path to take,
As I watched “your” woods fill up with snow.

So I asked the open forum of the air the obvious question:
“What do I do now?”

Someone to my right seemed to reply,
Though their lips weren’t moving.
Yet, now I knew that trick,
And wasn’t fooled by the “put-off.”

“We’ll tell you,” was the terse reply.
“You’re under control.”

Again, I paused and stared for a moment,
Kind of taken aback by this strange Yosemite “brotherhood.”

“No shit!” I said again,
Then, sat down on a nearby tree trunk,
And waited for “instructions.”

THAT REMOTE SENSE

I got a “remote” sense of you as I passed down the street,
On my usual route along Somerset close to the intersection of Redwood.
I could feel your presence in the heat of midday,
Sentient, energetic, omniscient, aware.
As usual, you were fully “there” in the abstract sense of that; yet, not, as such, “there”
In the strictest definition of the same.

For some reason, they called this Paranoid Schizophrenia,
Though it was only a separate form of reality, twice-removed,
Redefined, reframed, still the same thing,
Not, by logical rationalizing, to be so merely dismissed,

But as we conversed in the usual manner,
Our voices carrying on conversation in my mind,
I came to my epiphany.
I came to the point of Cognition.

Across the street along the front of one of the newer courts,
A house stood along the front area of the same.
That “remote” sense became stronger.

That’s when I knew why it was “remote.”

On top of the house was a satellite dish,
From which I “sensed” your energy.

However, then, the whole thing became crystal clear.
That’s all you were.
Electrical distortion, twice removed.

An expression of Espionage in its most sophisticated form.

It was a “live” area meant to monitor the surrounding area,
For purposes of surveillance.
And a mask for people who wanted to create phone “psychic” activity,
So they could engage in the vice of crime, undetected.

At last, I knew who “you” were,
And why you “knew” me.
And I also knew your name.

It was Legion.
And you lived in the Devil’s Court.

You had finally been “identified” in the military sense of the same.
And I, at least, had achieved my objective in the Freudian War,
Cognition.

Though still there was no clear victor,
Nor would there perhaps ever be.

Yet, at least, I knew who “you” were and that was, at least, some small yet strange comfort.

THE HORROR OF ETERNITY

At the very threshold of Night’s Door,
The myriad shadows waited,
Conversing in frightened tones,
Not knowing what to do,
As the Moon stared coldly overhead,
A bleak, uncaring visage amidst the craggy boulders of the steep hills,
The unmoved, expressionless, eternal witness to all Man’s evils.

Clustered amidst the foot of the climbing rocks and fallen trees,
They waited, hushed yet fearfully whispering,
As Night was still in Her Reign.
And Her Kingdom was yet under no hint of threat.

The Hours marched by stellar degrees through the distant skies,
Where burning stars clutched the roof of Heaven,
As if fearful of some maddening plunge through the gulfs of space,
And its eternal reaches.

When the first burning rays finally alighted on Night’s Door,
She turned, gasping, gesturing helplessly to her Sisters, The Shadows,
Not to move but to wait for Her amidst the twisted boughs
Of the conspiring trees that crowded the nearby woods and boulders,
Where the Devil’s children knew only the Old Ways,
And not those of the Modern Order.

As Apollo lifted his fiery scepter,
The Shadows fled at His command,
And rushed between the nearby craggy boulders,
And ragged clutches of shrubs and trees,
That crowded the rocky heights,
Where the Witch covens awaited their uncertain arrival.

There, they writhed and gyrated, unspeakably,
With the same,
Not knowing quite what they would will,
Save that Nature would will what he may if Discord would not.

When Night came again with her gestures of peace,
Beckoning again to her Sisters,
They came forth to await Time’s eternal will,
At the foot of the craggy boulders and fallen trees,
Where, again, they could only stand about, fearfully,
Whispering and carrying on in frightened conspiracy of conversation,
Knowing not quite what the morrow would bring,
Except the conspiring madness of Eternity’s monotonous cycle,
That had no end,
But only the madness of continuity,
And the horror of its lack of end and brevity.

John Carney was born in San Francisco, California on December 13th, 1960. He has been writing and publishing horror fiction and poetry for about five years. He has been published in The Horror Zine about five or six times.

He also writes piano ragtime and has a website of miscellaneous scores available for free download. He is a member of the Sacramento Ragtime Society and the West Coast Ragtime Society. His book is available on Amazon called The Vampire Sonnets.

John has also been published in Death Head Grin several times, which is an e-zine edited by Larry Green. John’s work is contained in DHG’s archived fiction area.