The July Selected Poet is Dan Weatherer

Please feel free to email Dan at: fatherdarkness01@gmail.com

MORTEM PRAETERITI
(Death of the Past)

Youth is all too fleeting,
A time of our lives over before it ever seemed to begin.
Looking back, I see all the opportunities I missed,
Naivety and apathy obstacles to success.
I am a learned man now,
And hindsight is my friend.
Confident and assured, I can be the man that I dared not.
For age brings wisdom (if not sense).
Death’s shadow looms over me,
Yet there is still much I desire to achieve.
Regret at time idled away, gnaws at my gut,
And bitterness threatens to overwhelm.
Hear me child, for I know of what I speak.
Seize the day, for those are numbered.
Though my flesh may rot and my bones may splinter,
Mine remains the mind of a young man.

And they say that youth is wasted on the young.    

SEPSIS

It was a troubled and broken sleep
Which night deemed fit to bestow upon me, last. 
Seldom do I rest with peace,
This I freely admit.
Yet the images that my subconscious conjured that night
Haunt me during these arduous hours of wake.

For though the sun beat mercilessly upon my kin,
Whispering of promise and untold delight,
I seek solitude in the shadows.
Away from the babble of those detestable masses.
Away from the fragrance of bodies complaining against the heat.
Away.

With thoughts of that cursed house,
Am I entertained.
Crumbling and rotten,
My enforced home.
How could I forget those weeping walls?
Crying tears of maggots,
Bulbous and lithe.
And other nightmarish creatures
That have no place,
No right to exist.

I remember knowing, however this might be,
(For logic escapes the realm of the dream).
That this festering place was to be at once my home and my prison,
and that nothing I had accomplished, or might ever so, would grant me the mercy of release.

To rid myself of such visions,
And to embrace the day
(As best I might, as best as able),
I took my son (not but one year of age),
Out into the light of the morning
and the promise of the day.

Though the streets were deserted,
(For the hour was still young),
There was left an indelible trail of the chaos,
Left by that hellish night past.
It seemed that while I languished,
Lost betwixt the Hells of my mind,
Others did revel,
And drink,
And fuck,
Leaving their filth behind,
As passage for which my boy and I must tread.

Such was the depth of squalor that my infant son,
His legs stubby and short, struggled to walk.
I, ever the doting father, pulled him free from the grime,
And waded knee deep,
Fighting against the tide of discarded beer cans, torn chip trays, and soiled condoms.
  
What manner of degeneration have I stumbled into?
A drunken fuck, no more than a moments release,
Soon forgotten amidst a haze of vodka and weed. 
Her, writhing amid the squalor that litters the ground.
Him, urged on by the crowd of baying strangers.
Their tangled scent lingers.
My son wrinkles his nose in disgust.
I fight the urge to vomit.

Pity our children so innocent born,
Exposed to the vermin of those that we are duty bound to call neighbours,
While out walking with Father,
One sunny morn.

FLUXA FINEM
(Fleeting End)

Small, so small as to be invisible,
I feel their touch.
Countless armies move over my body,
My flesh becoming their home.

I wash, I scrub,
I make my skin red and sore.
Yet still they march,
And sickness rides with them.

I see them now,
Of fear I’m free.
I see them now,
On you, not me.

Award-winning author, Dan Weatherer, was first published by Haunted Magazine in Spring, 2013.

Aside from the publication of numerous short stories with a multitude of presses, his next major project was a solo collection of short stories titled The Soul That Screamed (Winner of the Preditors & Editors™ Readers’ Poll ‘Best Anthology 2013’).  
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A further two collections Only the Good Burn Bright (Spring 2015, James Ward Kirk Fiction) and Neverlight (Spring 2016, Spectral Press) quickly followed. His first non-fiction book titled What Dwells Within was released in the Autumn of 2015 and details the life’s work of paranormal investigator Jayne Harris.

In 2015, Dan was shortlisted for the prestigious position of Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2016-2018.

In 2017, Neverlight was shortlisted for the first annual Arnold Bennett Literary Prize. His fourth, Just Eventide, was released in August 2017.

​2017 also saw the release of Dan’s historical novella, Crippen, courtesy again of Spectral Press.
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An accomplished playwright, Dan was winner of the 2017 Soundwork UK play competition, a finalist in the Blackshaw Showcase Award 2016, and a two-time finalist of the Congleton Players One Act Festival, 2016. Dan has had several of his plays appear at festivals and fringe events. The Dead Stage, a book detailing Dan’s experiences as a novice playwright was published courtesy of Crystal Lake Publishing in October, 2018
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Expect to see The Tainted Isle: English Gothic, out early 2019 courtesy of PS Publishing.

Dan lives in Staffordshire, where is married to his wife Jenni and is a (proud) full-time dad to his daughter Bethany, and his son Nathan.