A Broken Entrance

by Patrick Marsh

The ring of corrosion

was a tan, grimy wave

pushing you back to shore

against the phantasmal riptide

waiting inside the ghostly castle walls.

Its keeper lamenting the moisture

and raindrops, two natural forces

keeping you beyond safe.

If it weren’t eroded, seized, snarled, and antique,

the gate would click ajar, swinging open to a

courtyard of pebbled paths and petrified forests,

with rose leaves prickling the shadow light.

They hide whispering snails and their

tranquilizing spells, creeping in hungry abundance,

products of this fortress’s dead god

with his bored choirs and trances.

Beyond this hooked garden of jaundiced trees,

the half-crumbled walls sit in a stone slump,

with stained glass windows and rotten

curtains flickering on the suicide air.

Inside the keep, a straitjacket of empty rooms

expanding, spinning, shrinking, and dredging

till your hopeless soul

seeks a tall, rampart-leaping end.

That dead god wonders, dreams,

and wishes for visitors,

and victims to find his stale throne room.

Pillared with ribs and skulls

which xylophone-whistle against

the many rubble breezes.

A potent, supernatural hunger and need

kept muted, silent, and forgotten

by a small, rusted lock.