Thirteen Myna Birds

Happy October from Thirteen Myna Birds! The first three creepy doll poems here are TEASERS from the poetry chapbook PEDIOPHOBIA by Daniel G. Snethen, coming soon (shortly before Halloween) from Blood Pudding Press!

After that, you get 13 other creepy, dark, disturbing, sad, oddly amusing, unsettling offerings.

Nightmare of Dolls

Green glassy eyed heads

Unblinking verdant eyed stares

Headless dolls of Hell

Naked filthy doll

Arms, legs, broken contortions

Chatty Patty dead

Ken sleeping with Ken

Ken sleeping naked with Ken

Ken sleeping with me

Barbie doll loves Ken

Ken sleeping naked with me

Barbie murders Ken

Chucky chasing me

Maniacal Chucky laughs

Nightmare never ends

Cabbage Patch Doll tossed

Like salad in French dressing

Dead child dripping orange

Parisian doll head

Regrets but one life to give

Proudly guillotined

Surrounded by dolls

Leering sneering peering dolls

Haunt my wicked mind

Cannibal doll heads

Razor sharp cannibal teeth

Eat my bloody flesh

Images of dolls

Assault my feverish brain

Wicked grinning dolls

Dolls screaming loudly

Pump action shotgun blasting

All our babies dead

Cemeteries filled

With black haired porcelain dolls

Prematurely dead

Three dolls cold and dead

I bloodied the white skinned freaks

Wife and daughters dead

~Daniel G. Snethen~

(-Nightmare of Dolls previously appeared in Dark Gothic Resurrected & The Nocturnal Lyric - and will soon be appearing in the NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, PEDIOPHOBIA!)

Doll Food

A thousand dolls hungrily sit upon a thousand hills

watching over the crowded valley.

In their hands a thousand crow quills,

carefully keeping tally.

Cruel dolls laugh; laughing

at emaciated people.

Ivory faced dolls spit

at emaciated blackened people.

Hill top upon hill top

peopled with immaculate smiling faced dolls,

like judgmental self-righteous hypocrites

keeping watch over starved thralls.

Mountains of bloated food piled high

by thralls upon doll infested hills.

Mountains of filth piled high,

spreading contagion in valleys between the hills.

Food dead, black and bloated.

People dead, black, emaciated and bloated.

Sharp toothed dolls devoted

to eating of the enthralled emaciated bloated.

Dark human corpses piled

high on doll infested hills.

Unblinking dolls smiling,

keeping tally with their quills,

as people topple, fall

emaciated blackened and dead.

Ambrosia are these darksome thralls.

Food for doll gods…leavened bread.

~Daniel G. Snethen~

(-Doll Food previously appeared in Danse Macabre - and will soon be appearing in the NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, PEDIOPHOBIA!)

Doll Heads

Old growth cottonwoods denude of vegetation.

Doll heads bloodily hang like sweetened McIntoshes,

not swaying but crying in the wailing wind.

Glazed glassy eyes ghoulishly staring

from white bone porcelain heads.

Blood red drips like paint from severed necks,

fall as vermillion autumn leaves upon the snow,

penetrating whitened blanket like winter cranberries plump and red.

Doll heads mournfully swinging; singing

“Shall We Gather at the River,”

the river of blood red tears,

bleeding from Gethsemane.

Black plumed rooks pluck at green glassy doll eyes.

Ebony, ivory, emerald and ruby kaleidoscope of shape and color

haunt my recognition of decapitation!

My mother’s grey hair whipping in the wind

flecked with spider silk-like wisps of red.

Blue eyes staring like sapphires at her bastard son

imploring me to come unto the Father.

“I have no father,” I scream, “he is damned and dead.”

Once again the matriarchal doll head implores,

come unto the Father and praise Yahweh’s name.

The doll head choir sings “Just As I Am,” a Grahamesque invitation

to salvation from all that is evil, salvation from self.

Mrs. Kelly, my Sunday school teacher, turns her bloody porcelain skull

and implores me, unto the Father to come, and confess my iniquities.

“I have no father,” I weep, “he is damned and very dead.”

Silence falls upon the rooky woods as one by one each doll turns

its bloodied severed head to grieve an un-confessed sinner.

All heads but one turn in despair, all heads turn but the matriarchal

head of my loving mother, which pleads with sapphire eyes.

Fearfully, I turn and flee from the cottonwoods of doll heads but

not before hearing Mother weeping and crying out in her aged voice,

“My son, my son, why hast thou forsaken me!”

~Daniel G. Snethen~

(-Doll Heads previously appeared in Dark Gothic Resurrected & Darkling & Four Quarters to a Section Chapbook - and will soon be appearing in the NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, PEDIOPHOBIA!)

13.

The Tampa Incident

Yes, they did move

to the suburbs,

newlywed, hopeful,

dragging wedding presents

out of the U-Haul,

when suddenly,

before the wife could tie a bow in her apron,

they heard a "ka-boom"

and saw smoke pouring from the kitchen,

where the oven door

had opened all by itself,

and inside the oven

the Pillsbury Doughboy

had torched himself

in a gesture reminiscent

of Buddhist monks in Vietnam.

~Eileen Murphy~

*

12.

First Husband

I can't remember

what our wedding was like,

or the symphony, never simple,

of sex with him. And how

he used to sing. I know

we must have been in love.

But soon they followed me around

less than before,

those bright black eyes

that untied my strings.

Now everything he did

seemed false. And also true.

Then finally he left

with a breathy peck of a kiss

like the fast flight

he blew out on that afternoon.

It’s strange, but I still find him

in dreams

where I’m fondling the stickiness

he’s wrapped me in,

feeling the air

brush against my face,

as he cries out, head back,

opening his beak.

~Eileen Murphy~

*

11.

What I Remember

the winding staircase of our love

the battered boxes of our hearts

the collapsing bed of our fight

the skylights of our sleep

~Eileen Murphy~

*

10.

Going (for my dad)

Butterflies dissolve behind your eyes,

The warmth of your body fades into night,

Your sharp needle and my dark loom,

Lives we’ve been weaving since we were born.

The warmth of your body fades into night.

You cartwheel away because you are fleeing

The lives we’ve been weaving since we were born.

The death you’ve been dreaming has finally arrived.

When you cartwheel away because you are fleeing

Beyond all the threads that I can control,

The death you’ve been dreaming has finally arrived

Amid lullaby hospital sounds.

Beyond all the threads that I can control,

Butterflies dissolve behind your eyes

Amid lullaby hospital sounds:

Your sharp needle and my dark loom.

~Eileen Murphy~

*

Waking Up in April

Dad sucks air

with mouth open,

lungs flooded

with pneumonia.

Next to his bed

Is a plastic ballerina spinning

inside a jewelry box,

on her toes

in a ragged tutu

to the first few bars of

“Fur Elise.”

Mostly my siblings & I

hated “Fur Elise”

because you’re going to hate

any piece of music that

someone plays

over &

over

& over again.

Or you’ll love it.

But that didn’t happen.

Dad’s in the hospice section

of the hospital

& today they removed the tubes

from his nose.

Duh, duh, duh, da, da da da, whispers Dad.

So far from singing,

lightly pointing a finger

at the music box.

His hands are getting blue.

I wonder who Elise was.

Do we know? I ask him.

I’m afraid Dad can’t hear me.

His breathing is difficult, loud.

The tip of the ballerina’s toe shoes

are connected to a spring

& when you open the music box

she pops up on a small pink stage.

A tarnished mirror

glued to the box‘s inside cover

reflects the tiny dancer

spinning

around & around

as the tinny notes spill out.

And I rewind it & keep re-winding it

until

his breathing

stops.

~Eileen Murphy~

*

Wrenched From the Body, a Gaping Wound Always Bleeds

It happens again & again.

Hollowness is feeling the crushing heat

of a body which isn’t your own.

It burned me.

None hear the silence.

None see the dark.

The empty space between bodies

has no voice at all.

There are things inside deeper than hell,

wilder than nightmares.

I hear & see it.

Silent screams are always the loudest—

an octave powerful enough to shatter the body.

Memory is a bullet; rape the color red.

~Ariana D. Den Bleyker~

*

Fowl Play

Bending down,
spine curving,
my hands press into the pungent earth,
mud squeezing in between my fingers.
Livestock fumes
snake through my nose and mouth.

Metal edges
Cut into the curves of my body—
I am enclosed.
Claws curl into my skin,
wings beating against wire,
a harsh flutter of shared panic.

Feathers
brush against me,
raising goosebumps
that match the pocked skin of its face.
Strained gobbles,
High-pitched squeals—

I’m grabbing onto something live, wriggling,
something trying desperately to break free.
Freedom’s tornado swings between us,
but never hits.

I slam the trunk shut.

~U.S. Fowler~

Cherry-Picking in a Graveyard

My wet tongue drags across rotten apricots
You say that is what my mouth is good for
Not for rejoicing or whispering nothings
Your touch necrotized my flesh

An explosion of red juice fills your mouth
Adds a rogue glow to your lips
The cherries this time of year were the ripest to pick
Another body, another day,
Another lay

I am a crypt-keeper’s well regarded secret
A harvest of mealworms in the children’s graves
We bury bones that once belonged to me
Maggots picking holes in the cavities of my brain and body

Only headstones hold the knowledge of things stolen in the night
Robbers and cherry-pickers alike

~U.S. Fowler~

*

Candid Teeth

I can't tell the difference anymore between your kiss
blooming in the hollow of my throat and your teeth

in my jugular

between
sit on my face
and crawl away before I maim you

between
hitting my gag reflex and sickening me

should I like it
when you leave me breathless or bleeding

I ask, what are we
your mouth a cave, fanged with stalactites

We're two consenting adults to murder

~U.S. Fowler~

If I Had a Pneumatic Drill

If I had a jackhammer

I'd point it at my left temple

I'd give the pressure hose a yank

but my arms don't reach far

enough to hold the handle

press the switch

push or pull in this case

it's useless to consider it

since my arms won't reach

this throb, this cushioned sore,

burning flameball orange brain pill ulcer

I'll have to ask, though no one I know

will hold the hammer for

my temporary suicide

I'll put on one big red boxing glove

to bang my own twice, twice more

out and hard in against all

the stiffness I can hold

then wait for the massage of pain

to take

as the crow pecks out my left eye

oh thank you, sweet Crow Jane

we can both feel released when you crunch on that orb

peck, tear, squirt a bit

then one big swallowy gulp

resolves the problem.

~E. Martin Pedersen~

TO MY READERS

You dream of arms, legs, torsos,

being tossed into an open pit.

And a laboratory,

its bottles filled with human heads.

And a young woman being turned

on a sizzling spit by men in robes and hoods.

Is it any wonder you can't sleep.

Your tossing, turning,

awakes your lover

from a south sea isle,

gentle rolling waves,

a slow soothing tan.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

But you're already

amid a bloodthirsty crowd

in the shadow of the gallows.

Sleep is all nightmares,

all of the time.

You can't even doze by day

without flesh-eaters

and cackling witches for company.

Your psychiatrist asks

if you hated your parents.

You confess you did,

but had no wish

to skewer them on spikes.

Awake , your life is harmless enough.

You avoid devil worship.

You steer clear of serial killers

like the plague

and plagues like they're serial killers.

Your only experience with mob frenzy

is at a high-school football game.

But your subconscious

is another story.

I should know.

I wrote it.

~John Grey~

*

2.

Dracula

Dracula dies at the end of every movie, every story

Even though he’s immortal he dies

They, the heroes, dispose of him

Or he stumbles into the sunlight

Or falls into a frozen lake

Or he impales himself on a tree

The point is: he dies and humanity is preserved once more

But he always comes back the next time doesn’t he?

Red eyed like he’s been crying, he pulls the stake from his heart and swears death on the west

Not fully comprehending that he is the sacrifice

He dies for our pride and our bloodlust again and again

We put him back in the ground and hope for a good harvest

Here is a villain we can burn forever

He must, somewhere in his infamous mind, know that the game is rigged

When Dracula sits up from his coffin at dusk, puts on his cape and brushes his fangs without a mirror,

Do you think he wonders who his next meal will be?

Or who’ll put him down this time?

Even if his very human ego won’t admit it

He must resent

Doing all this

For us

I mean

After all

Jesus only had to do it

Once

~Nate Maxson~

Electric Dog

~MISH~