Category Archives: Poetry Work

A collection of various poems I have written in relation to horror, fantasy or the supernatural

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

The Cat and the Poison

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I don’t believe in a hell or a heaven

I don’t believe in any of the three thousand plus gods which meander through the minds of man now or ever have throughout the ages.

I do believe we are an important inception point in Earth’s history, but perhaps even that is a vain course of thinking of our human condition.

Time will tell if we are but a fundamental fantastical failure waiting to happen or something more than we even suppose.

Ah, but there’s the rub. How ever are we going to truly know the outcome of us?

Time is a far-flung thing.

It cannot be curtailed or cut, bought or borrowed, it can only be endured, we are self placed into a closed box with a flask of poison like Schrodinger’s cat but instead we are the cat and also the very poison that may kill us inside as we are closed inside with it, us.

Eventually or not at all, are the only two outcomes.

It’s not for us to know, for we are dead and alive at the same time and the poison just sits with us in that box looking more menacing but delicious with every day we sit with it.

By Philip Wardlow July, 2024

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

This Maze

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Maze

Even if we had a road map in this maze
of life we would still get lost.
Reason why?
We all go the way we ultimately want,
even through pitfalls, dead ends
and switchbacks,
Thinking we know better,
feel we know better,
know we know better than
the lines already burned onto
the pages of the past
from the ones who
came before that,
drawing their travels in blood
and then us tearing up the map.

The current oh “wise ones” say, “I see your pain you
went through, sir or madam,
but ya know what? I think I wish
to go through the same
just to see if the outcome
will be different for me.”

And surprise, surprise
it isn’t,
So we cry, we cry
and wonder why
we were all denied
that blue ribbon or
that shiny gold star that others seem so often to attain
Is it perhaps because you never
learned that golden lesson…

Life doesn’t owe you shit.

by Philip Wardlow July, 2024

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

When Feeling was easy

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When I was kid, I  soaked up the
world like a sponge,
I lived and loved life like it was breathing into me,
from building a fort, riding my bike, daydreaming on the
grass while figuring out what was in the clouds, hiking in the woods
with my brothers,  making discovery upon discovery, 
with my family
even when it was at its hardest.
I felt it all, the joy, the anger, the rage, the sorrow, the fear
all the certainties of a day.
I felt it
There was no ambiguity about it.
I was in it and it was glorious!
Head down, I strode forth into it.
from school, to my first girlfriend, to lost girlfriends,
to family dysfunction piling upon the pile
that had already been there, to marriage,
to birth, to divorce, to remarriage,
to new joys, to new stresses.
I road it all like a surfer catching a
wave, I was cheered and revered
at my feats of strength, my charms, and
my worth at being such a great man.
Somewhere along the way through all that 
I became afraid of reaching, feeling,
seeing, breathing, knowing, discovering, engaging.
I want that wonder back.
A part of me won't venture there,
for whatever fear that dwells in
me sees it is a perilous path,  a wish that
is fraught with failures not wanting to be found
I still love and notice the  all seeming magic that is life, whether tangible in
a kiss or a touch,  or a breeze  rushing over you at just the right
time on a sunny day. 
I do still feel it but
a majority of that magic has been muted
perhaps forever more for me.


By Philip Wardlow July  2024
 
  
Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Circe, the tragic Goddess of Love

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She dwelled deep in the dark woods, on the isle of Aeaea off the west coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea in a glorious palace all alone.

Alone you say? You would be wrong to think that. Oh very wrong indeed.

For she was surrounded by a menagerie of pets always keeping her company; from the wolves that roamed far and wide, to lions lazily lingering near her as she sat her throne, to the birds nesting at her feet, or the occasional pig rutting the grounds outside.

Some called her a Goddess, others knew her to be an enchantress, or the darkest of witches to ever run afoul of.

What ever she was, all knew her as Circe, the woman who lived on the island of Aeaea, with hair of flowing fiery rays and oftentimes a temper to suit. 

She was no temptress, yet some did claim her to be the daughter of a sea nymph, so that is perhaps why many a man was beguiled to find himself led to her isle.

Lucky you could be, if you were to find her. However, she did not suffer fools, for if you were funny and clever and easy on her eyes, she would take you as her lover and perhaps let you leave after a year and a day.

But be you arrogant or a swine, well, she would surely turn you into one, to rut the grounds of her great estate like the pig you were.

Turn away her advances of love and devotion, she might just concoct a potion for you to drink to transform your soul and form into that of a loyal lion always by her side.

Think you her better? She would send you to join the pack that roams the island always at her beck and call, and you would serve, oh so willingly with a snarl and a smile.

Oh, be you a resistant King come to call? Well, a bird you could become, wings clipped, with a special place for you nesting at her feet nearby.

Never satisfied was Circe of love being denied when wanting to be given, she is a cautionary tale of many a man’s follies followed soon by her own.

So diabolically desperate was she, always to love, that none ever did in return, for they always saw the darkness seething underneath tucked away in her heart.

Unrequited love will forever perhaps be her destiny until her heart finds its true form from whence it was first born, at peace, light, and burning with the intensity of a thousands suns.

By Philip Wardlow Dec 27th,2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Falling to Me

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This very day of days, six years ago, she fell, 
unprotected, falling fast
falling hard, 
but never did I think her destiny and I's were 
linked.

For what would a beauty such  as she want with a simple man like me?
As always, I was too blind to see.

Surely I was just a dalliance, a distraction, a small detour
on the road to a much bigger prize.

But there she was,  as soft as you please , entangled in my
arms, wanting the solace and the silence, not just my manly charms
in the sheets.

She wanted the comfort, the safety, the silence in her mind, all intertwined with a kiss and small caress.

She fell then , fell, fell like a stone into a welcoming well, and I enveloped her, 
her beautiful warmth permeating deep, deep, deep within me.

I was hers then, body and soul.

Hers alone.


by Philip Wardlow Dec 20th, 2023










Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

My Hinterland

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~ Hinterland: an area lying beyond what is visible or known 

An area I wish to go,
to get lost in like a hermit
in the woods of nowhere,
that somewhere no one else goes to because it can not be found.

Not at dawn, nor dusk, nor the in-between times

It’s all my time, my time.
My adventure, my mind, my place in my head of heads
where I softly tread a Universe of my own discoveries and foundlys of unique thought.

Mine to wrestle and wrangle and comingle the depths of philosophical phrases.

No matter how crazy, cruel, lazy, kind, or neurotic, dare I say perhaps erotic.

Just let it be. Let me be.

Let me find the way, or get lost on the way to this Hinterland I wish to call my home.

By Philip Wardlow Nov, 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work, The EROTIC ZONE

Cuddling with Benefits – Erotic Warning

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You asked me to come just
Cuddle
But I saw the slight curl of your smile
and knew I might be in for some trouble
Because I always thought with you
a cuddle, was a cuddle, was a cuddle
You said there would be others,
A plethora of partners to partake of,
A glorious heap, you said
All gathered nicely in your
California King of a bed.
But when I arrived at your door,
entered, and gave you a small kiss
I became transfixed on the bed
before me.
Not a soul did exist in this very place and time, not one on the bed, nor in the hall, nor the kitchen,
“Perhaps, the bath?” I asked.
“No, dear Sir, just you and only I, so forgive the ruse, but cuddling with you has taken on a new meaning betwixt my mind and you “

She walked languidly towards the bed in her robe which she casually disrobed, leaving no mystery to what ruse she had connived on this cuddling of all cuddling nights now in disguise.

A sigh escaped me. As I saw her in true form…silken fair skin, full pert breasts, curved hips to rounded bottom, to a well tended inviting flower just waiting to open.

She then lay upon the bed, exactly in the middle, and it was not lost on me that she crawled ever so slowly on her knees to get there as she looked back at me, long hair falling off her shoulder to one side.

Clever, clever,clever of a cuddling girl, she new what she was about as she smiled and patted a spot on the bed next to her all the while directing her willful gaze towards me.

“You know this changes everything my dear? ” I softly intoned, as I kicked off my shoes to the corner of the room, unzipped and dropped my pants to the floor, removed my shirt in a flash and was left with only my underwear betweenixt my cock and the air.

“OH, I know. This is next level. But you cuddle so very well, better than all the rest. You are the King of cuddles Sir…oh the very best. Now I just want that cock of yours to cuddle all the rest, inside and out and over and under. So remove your damn underwear and cuddle the fuck out of me real hard right now!”
So with that good people, I bid you adieu for my story is quite through and if I might say so this was quite overdue.

By Philip Wardlow October 11th, 2023

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

They Call Her Autumn

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 They call her autumn
because she
wraps around you
like a flurry of golden leaves
in a whirlwind
You WILL fall for her
simply because her
violent nature demands it,
commands it.
A Tempest,
a wild child
which rides lightening
and flashes a grin that
fucking drives you
to your knees
Just try and stand against
the forces within her
and you will be taught
a cruel lesson about
natures full fury
once unleashed.
But autumn she is a beauty
a conundrum
a magical journey
if you be so bold to take it
Be you so bold?
To capture the surreal
and hold it close
Could you ever be so lucky?


By Philip Andrew Wardlow
Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Great Expectations of the Souls

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What Soul have you?

Young and Impressionable, or Old and Jaded?

Both have their pitfalls.

The young one will put up with too much and wait too long to get out.

The old one will take a beautiful
moment and stomp it to death while crying into their pillow at night.

Expectations of the Impressionable Soul are racing, fun and fluid, chaotic and tragic in an instant of time

Expectations of a Jaded Soul is exhausting, impenetrable, and walled on all four sides with catapults launching flaming balls of fire.

Both want everything life has to offer, but the thing is, one is willing to give too much to get it, while the other doesn’t believe the offering of everything exists anymore, if it ever did.

So I ask, which one are you?

Hmm…or is there another option behind Door#3

By Philip Wardlow October, 2021

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Melancholy Ebb and Flow

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At times the tides can be low with the seas pulled back from my shore, leaving an empty wet beach of flopping fish and half broken seashells and garbage mingling in the flotsam and jetsam amongst an almost barren terrain of foreign smells.

When in this low tide, I feel underwhelmed in life, not seen enough,  not heard enough, not understood enough, not known enough, not connected enough
not wanted enough. All the enoughs being never enough.

Then flip that, when the ocean is high and the waves are rugged and  crash hard with a splendor of driving  kinetic energy, when the universe seemingly has all its sights set upon me to thrive and live lively as a person could ever be, I live gloriously!

Life, throwing it all at me,  from the left , right, forward and behind, overwhelming me ,  surging, filling me full to bursting.
and then I do.

I think I have always had this rhythm in me, this cycling of not quite heaven and not quite hell and all the thoughts they bring.  A very fickle Melancholy

I don't want to feel sometimes because it all becomes too much to. One because I know it will end. That feeling.  It will  end, never to return and I will miss it.

At other times I want to feel it all, like a greedy child at a candy shop, mindful of all the sights, and feelings, and intimacies, soaking it in, in the moment, truly not a care for the future. I am filled with a  smile and laugh that lasts  forever in me in that moment..

I know I am a lucky man.  A very lucky man. So so lucky in my life compared to others.

So I hold to that thought.  That I am a lucky man.

The luckiest man that ever there was.

By Philip Wardlow September 12th, 2023