Dead Quiet                                                                                    

my body has been slowly diminished
my heart quickly fell victim
the ventricles soon consumed
no pain
just an awareness
of a thousand mouths
the dead can’t forget the world
rain seeps in insidiously
dripping so slowly through
the coffin joints and cracks
the summer heat sits stubbornly
on the decaying brain
 My first death anniversary
 not much left to celebrate
 a skeleton, soon to be
disjointed, not 
shiny and slick
as a Halloween 
counterpart but
a bag of old bones
to be shaken
 one bag quite like another.
I could be Hamlet
but more likely Yorick
or just a minor role
you’re thinking
at last he can RIP
I don’t like to disappoint you
a graveyard’s a lively place
they’re digging graves
close to me
 someone’s leaving flowers
then there’s the courting couples
 the most disturbing of all
 I think by the second
 anniversary
 it will be quieter
 I’ll have almost 
 completely
  gone



 Night Voices

 The house is darkness itself.
 Ancient beams stretch stiffly
  Across white plaster ceilings.
  Behind my bed, a portrait-
  A young girl in fragile blue-
  Moves restlessly, imprisoned
  behind the frame’s gold bars.
  Whispering, secret gossip,
  Here the listless dead,
  Huddled round the cold,
  Brick fireplace, speak
  Of old tragedies:
  Sheep lost in deep snow,
  Ploughmen, drowned in floods.
  Outside the yew trees brood,
  Dour, dark in the east wind.
  Loose, leaden panes
  Chatter glassily of scenes
  Of past bloodshed.
  Footsteps sound softly
  Tiptoeing up narrow stairs,
   Seeking long gone rooms.
   From far away haunting notes
   As pale, skeletal fingers
   Press yellowing keys.
   I turn to sleep,
   Behind me, the past
   Lingers…



OUT OF THE SEA

Green slime clings
to skeletal forms.
Mouths slowly drip
dark blood
onto the sand.
Webbed feet
long talons sharpened
on flesh and bone
claw their way
over sea-wet stone.
Moonlight creates
a white-washed path
over a rough and
storm-driven sea.
One by one these
Monsters of the deep
each cast looming
shadows over
the midnight beach.
In the dark
they crawl their way
to grass covered graves
where the dead lie
wrecked sailors
saved from the storm.
Skeletons, the rotting
 dead snatched in 
the moonlight
to be devoured
to be digested 
by knife-like fangs.
As daylight dawns
into the waves
they return to sleep
back to darkness
in the depths
of the deep. . .

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Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher who lives in Cambridge, UK; She has taught in UK, India and Tanzania. Her interests include: equestrian sports, the countryside, Medieval History and Ghosts. She has had work published in a number of magazines and anthologies: ‘Paddle’, ‘Dipity’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Cosmic Daffodils’, ‘The Flying Dodo’, ‘Waywords Lit; Journal’, Pure Haiku’, ‘The Plumtree Tavern’, ‘Sciku’ and others.

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