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November 10th, 2009
10:56 pm - Holiday on Phreetum Prime
 Copyright © 2009 Richard H. Fay Holiday on Phreetum Primeby Richard H. Fay Twin red suns rise over a crimson sea As wudols twitter a raucous chorus Amongst the majestic etafal trees. Saunter beneath the weeping purple fronds And sip a cup of sytunn flower tea While wine-stained waters kiss a chartreuse shore. Sail the ruby waves on a solar sloop. Watch black-winged tijucks fish for mugaspits. Feel the droning hum of an ulorn's song As it dives right under your silver ship. Weigh anchor beside Glastornak Island And marvel at its tall crystalline spires. Return to your quaint cliff side veranda In time to see the blue shubiyemps dance. Laugh at their crazy mating rituals, But then shed a tear when the males drop dead. Join the joyous feast and masquerade To honour the fatal change of seasons. Rest quietly beneath the yellow gaze Of Phreetum Prime's seething volcanic moon. Spy golden sprites flaring in the night sky As ion storms clash in the stratosphere. Be lulled to sleep by a burgana's trill As a soft breeze blows across the dark sea. (Poem originally published in Star*Line, March/April 2008)
Current Mood: artistic
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November 1st, 2009
08:57 pm - "weeping tree" in SCIFAIKUEST
My horrorku "weeping tree" has been published in the on-line version of Scifaikuest. Check it out! (THIS should take you right to the horrorku page. Just scroll down the page to find my contribution.)
"Weeping tree" combines the concept of a weeping willow with the potentially dangerous, and possibly even murderous, animate willow of folklore (think Tolkien's Old Man Willow). I play a bit on the name weeping willow (although I never mention willow by name). Why does the tree weep? Perhaps it weeps for a bitter loss, one it must avenge.
Yes, I've been down the path of murderous willows before, but I love the concept so much (I like willow trees), I just had to go there again.
Current Mood: accomplished
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03:34 pm - Abandoned Towers Issue #4
Robin in Sherwood Forest
© Copyright 2009 Richard H. Fay
Abandoned Towers Issue #4 is now in print. Within the pages of this zine you can find the above colouring page, "Robin in Sherwood". In addition, my cinquain chain or swirl (I'm not exactly sure which it would technically be) "Amongst Faerie Oaks" and its accompanying illustration also appear in the same issue.
Copies of Abandoned Towers Issue #4 are available for purchase here.
Current Mood: accomplished
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October 31st, 2009
10:56 am - On This Halloween
On This Halloween
by Richard H. Fay
Knock, knock, knock
Sounds upon front door
Clad in frightful garb,
While quickening gloom
Darkens Autumn sky
And a dying breeze
Swirls crisp fallen leaves
On this Halloween.
Who could it be?
Heroes and villains,
Princesses and ghouls,
Witches and wizards,
Monsters and goblins,
Werewolves and robots,
All waiting for treats,
Stand upon my step
On this Halloween.
Knock, knock, knock
Sounds upon front door
Bathed in porch light's glow,
While dimming candle
Behind grinning face
Of grim hollowed gourd
Sputters and snuffs out
On this Halloween.
Who could it be?
Nothing but a chill
Carried on a breath
Blowing from nowhere
Stirs at the threshold.
Not a living soul,
No visible thing,
Treads upon my step
On this Halloween.
Knock, knock, knock
Sounds upon front door
Silvered by moonlight,
While night creatures call
And tattered grey ghosts
Scoot swiftly across
An eventide sky
On this Halloween.
Who could it be?
Unearthly black forms
Reeling to fell tune
Send scared heart racing
And steal frightened gasp.
Devilish sprites loosed
To play impish tricks
Dance upon my step
On this Halloween.
***
Happy Halloween!
Current Mood: spooky
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October 23rd, 2009
02:42 pm - Why do I Write Poetry?
A fellow member on the Read Write Poem network asked the age-old question "why do we write poetry?". Of course, I couldn't resist answering the question in verse. The poem I came up with might be a bit rough around the edges, being composed in a matter of a few minutes, but I still think it does a stellar job of conveying my reasons for continuing to write poetry, even when prose may be more "the thing" in today's writing world. Anyway, I liked the piece well enough to share elsewhere, so here is my poetic answer to the question "why write poetry?":
Why do I write Poetry? An insistent muse,
A demanding voice
Calling out in verse,
A sensitive soul
Stirred by the beauty
Inherent in words,
A restless mind
Full of swirling ideas
Released in a flurry
Of poetic potential,
Readers clamouring
For more and more
(Or so I hope),
Those are the reasons
why I keep writing
poetry. Or maybe,
Just perhaps,
That's what sells.
That's how my voice,
My creative shout,
My artistic cry
Gets heard. And I just can't stop.
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October 22nd, 2009
11:46 am - yellowed leaves
yellowed leaves
cracking broken spine
treasured tome
(a revision of a haiku that originally appeared in Haiku Haven, May 2007)
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12:06 am - "Gathering of the Dead" in TALES FROM THE MOONLIT PATH
My dark speculative poem "Gathering of the Dead" has been published in the Halloween 2009 Issue of the dark and haunting e-zine Tales from the Moonlit Path. Check it out!
Gathering of the Dead" combines two things near and dear to my heart - ghost stories and fairy folklore. The fairy connection may simply be implied through the mention of "rath" (as in "fairy rath") and "glamour" (as in the fairy power of glamour), but it's there just the same. And the traditional tale that inspired this piece, that of Hugh King's disturbing encounter with the fair folk on November Eve, makes a pretty strong connection between fairies and the dead. The two realms do overlap. I merely added even more ghostly trappings to the eldritch spirits that gather on the rath each November's Eve.
The photo I chose to accompany my bio below the poem caused a slight stir in this household. I wanted to go with something seasonally appropriate. After all, it is a Halloween poem in the Halloween issue of a horror publication. However, my wife laughed when she first saw the pic, saying that I don't normally look like that. My daughter just stared in shock.
It wasn't quite the reaction I was looking for. I guess I should be glad of the fact that I don't normally look scary-evil. Well, at least my family doesn't think so. Others may disagree.
Current Mood: spooky
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October 16th, 2009
12:17 am - "The Haunted Castle" at THE ABSENT WILLOW REVIEW
My dark speculative poem "The Haunted Castle" is now on-line at The Absent Willow Review. Check it out!
In this poem, I combine my love of castles with my interest in things supernatural, something which I admit to doing once or twice before. And this time, the castle's ruinous state and the strange goings-on within are told from the perspective of the dreadful fortress itself.
I really stuffed this piece full of interesting vocabulary (interesting to me, anyway). You won't find too many works of 31 lines containing motte (as in the mound upon which early castle towers were built), eldritch (my favourite word), cot (as in cottage), bailey (as in courtyard), bines (as in twining plants), obfuscating, miasma, laird (as in Scottish lord), cadaverous, and fete. I may have overloaded this one just a bit word-wise, but I make no apologies for doing so. I just love words.
Current Mood: spooky
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October 15th, 2009
01:37 pm - "Coach-a-Bower" in APHELION
My horrorku "Coach-a-Bower" is now on-line in the October issue of Aphelion. Check it out!
Although the kernel of inspiration for many of my works comes from conceptual seeds gleaned from various reading materials, once in a while something I see in a television program or in a movie sprouts into a usable concept. "Coach-a-Bower" actually blossomed after I watched an episode of the British television show Strange featuring a banshee and the "costa burra".
According to an entry in Bob Curran's A Field Guide to Irish Fairies, tales from County Tyrone and other locales tell of the headless Dullahan driving a black coach known as the coach-a-bower, from the Irish coiste bodhar (deaf or silent coach). The Dullahan summons those about to die. Wherever he stops, death soon follows.
I figured that the coach might be silent, but the souls it carries away may not be, especially if they were bound for Hell.
Current Mood: wicked
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October 10th, 2009
11:58 am - The Banshee's Cry
The Banshee's Cry
A fell keening echoes across the moor,
Punctuated by the pealing thunder.
Pouring rain lashes at the windowpane
While argent cracks flash in the darkened sky,
But the tumultuous storm cannot quell
The ominous wailing of that fey hag.
A figure wrapped in a funeral shroud
Glides swiftly across the tempest-wracked heath
And draws closer to this ancient estate.
A fearful being of mist and shadow,
Well imbued with sinister witchery,
Forewarns of a preternatural doom.
Master of this mouldering edifice
Inhabited only by grey shadows
And a myriad of pallid spectres,
A withered scion of a once great house,
I know the dreadful truth of the legends;
The eldritch oracle foretells my death.
The prophetic call chills my troubled soul,
But I resolve to accept my dim fate.
A raddled face stares through the murky glass.
My weak heart pounds rapidly in my chest;
I hold the revolver up to my head.
The banshee will be proved right
One last time.
Poem Copyright © 2007 Richard H. Fay
Originally published in Sinister Tales, October 2007
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/wink.gif) weird
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October 9th, 2009
10:50 am - Poem Accepted at THE ABSENT WILLOW REVIEW
October is finally shaping up the way it should for this dark speculative poet. My dark speculative poem "The Haunted Castle" has been accepted for publication in the October 16th issue of The Absent Willow Review, an e-zine featuring tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction (I believe I discovered them through Ralan's).
I speak a lot about the need for persistence and perseverance in the mad world of publication. And the forthcoming publication of "The Haunted Castle" shows how handy these traits can be. This happened to be the eighth time I submitted this piece for consideration at various zines. It was turned down at the very first venue for being all description and no action (yikes!). On the fourth try it almost made it into the final issue of the now-defunct zine Whispers of Wickedness, but the poem didn't make the final cut. After that, I rewrote the piece and sent it out a fifth time. Unfortunately, the rewritten piece was turned down by the fifth venue. So, figuring that my execution of the concept was indeed a bit flawed, I rewrote it a second time. I added a fifth stanza to up the action quotient just a bit. The zine I sent the poem to on my sixth try went on indefinite hiatus shortly after I submitted the piece, so I sent it out again. It wasn't the sort of thing the seventh venue was looking for, so I sent it back out yet again, this time to The Absent Willow Review. And finally, after eight tries and two revisions, success!
I could have given up at any time along this crazy path, but I trudged on. After a handful of attempts to get the poem published I could have either stuffed it in the trunk of no return or posted it on my blogs, but I wasn't quite ready to give up on finding the piece a proper home. I figured I would try two more times, for a total of ten, and then give up.
And what is the poem in question all about? Well, I tried to echo what I did in my poem "The Haunted Isle", but for a ruined fortress instead of a desolate island. The concept of writing something from the perspective of a haunted isle worked so beautifully that I just had to compose one for a haunted castle as well. Unfortunately, my creative vision may not have been the sort of thing most places wanted to see. That happens sometimes.
At least "The Haunted Castle" has now found a home, and in the month of October, too. Halloween spookiness comes a little bit early this year.
Cue ghostly noises: woooo-oooo-oooo-oooo!
(In case anyone wants to know my count for forthcoming poems in October, in case anyone cares, "The Haunted Castle" is my third new poem scheduled for October publication. I already had a couple of reprints published in the on-line version of Abandoned Towers earlier this month. Yay, October!)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) relieved
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October 6th, 2009
12:05 pm - Poems & Art up at ABANDONED TOWERS
Update: my speculative cinquain "They've Come for me Again" and my speculative poem "The Birth of Sentience on Aggraboth V" , along with their respective accompanying illustrations, are now on-line at Abandoned Towers.
"They've Come for me Again"
"The Birth of Sentience on Aggraboth V"
If you missed it when I posted the poems and illustrations here last Friday, check 'em out at Abandoned Towers!
By the way, it looks like Crystalwizard managed to make the Abandoned Towers site somewhat simpler to navigate. It's certainly easier to find the appropriate links. Yay, CW!
Current Mood: pleased
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October 3rd, 2009
08:52 pm - Poems & Art Accepted at ABANDONED TOWERS
My speculative poem "The Birth of Sentience on Aggraboth V" and my speculative cinquain "They've Come for me Again", along with their respective illustrations, have been accepted for publication in the on-line version of Abandoned Towers. Yes, these are the same poem and art combos that I just posted here yesterday, and they are already featured on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store, but I'll still post a link when they're up at the e-zine.
As much as I've always thought sending out new material was better than sending out reprints, I could get into the reprint habit quite easily. I might have to consider sending out reprints more often, to publications that take reprints, anyway.
Current Mood: pleased
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October 2nd, 2009
02:14 pm - They've Come for me Again
They've Come for me Again
Bright lights,
strange silhouettes,
voices inside my head
signal my departure from Earth
once more.
Poem copyright © 2008 Richard H. Fay
Originally published in the November 2008 issue of the web-zine Aphelion.
Poem and illustration available on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store.
Current Mood: artistic
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01:13 pm - The Birth of Sentience on Aggraboth V
The Birth of Sentience on Aggraboth V
A green jungun raises her head
Out of the black primeval muck.
She spreads her rainbow hued neck frill
And stares at the huge crimson sun.
The sight ignites a mental spark;
Enlightenment widens her world.
Strange ideas course through her brain
And fill her mind with new notions.
"Who am I?" she wonders gravely,
"And what might I be doing here?
How was all this I see first made?
Is there a purpose to my life?
And what may greet me at life's end?"
With clearer vision than before
Her amber eyes look all around.
They espy her scaly comrades
Feeding on some armoured quibbibs,
Oblivious to her wondrous
Contemplative epiphany.
Anxious to share her new-found thoughts
She opens her fanged maw and roars;
Junguns lack a spoken language
To put concepts into real words.
Disappointed at her failure,
She sheds a tear and sinks back down
Into the primordial ooze.
Poem copyright © 2008 Richard H. Fay
Originally published in The Fifth Di..., Edition 10, #1, March 2008.
Illustration available on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store.
Current Mood: artistic
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September 30th, 2009
11:35 am - Poem Accepted at Tales from the Moonlit Path
There was a bit of good news in my e-mail inbox today. My dark speculative poem "Gathering of the Dead" has been accepted for publication in the Halloween 2009 issue of the dark e-zine Tales from the Moonlit Path. As always, I'll post a link when the poem is on-line.
"Gathering of the Dead" draws upon the link between faerie and the dead, perhaps even amplifying it for dramatic effect. I found my inspiration in a story extract included in The Ultimate Fairies Handbook by Susannah Marriot. The folktale that served as my inspiration, from Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, concerned Hugh King's encounter with the fair folk late one November Eve. I took the idea of a gathering on a fairy rath on November's Eve, added some ghostly imagery, potentially fatal consequences, and perhaps a dash of irony, and turned the whole thing into a cautionary verse. And, as I tend to do quite often, I also threw in a bit of archaic vocabulary, using the word "gasts" as a synonym for "ghosts" or "spirits". (Gast used in that sense does appear in the archaic and obscure section of my old Websters New International Dictionary, as well as in the copy of the OED I consulted in the college library.)
I believe this will be the fourth poem of mine to appear in Tales from the Moonlit Path. I like it when this happens; after the second or third time, it gets harder and harder to think of it as just a fluke. By the fourth time, I actually begin to think I might know what I'm doing. Then again...
Anyway, I'm always especially pleased when one of my fairy lore pieces gets picked up for publication. And I'm glad that I managed to get this particular poem accepted for publication in a Halloween issue, since it is all about what happens on the fairy rath on November's Eve.
Current Mood: pleased
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September 22nd, 2009
01:04 pm - "Visages of Betrayal and Madness" in THE MONSTERS NEXT DOOR
My dark poem "Visages of Betrayal and Madness" has been published in Issue Eight of The Monsters Next Door, their very-first print issue. The poem can also be seen in the free pdf sneak-peek, but I suggest buying a print copy to help support the editor's efforts in making the switch from e-zine to print zine. Besides, reading something on the computer screen just isn't the same as reading something actually in print.
Hmm...what do I say about this poem? Do I dare admit that it deals with my very real, very troubled thoughts regarding my own parents? It is true; I did delve into my own pain, disappointment, and resentment when writing this piece. It's a hell I've revisited once or twice before. Not that I'm going to turn into a murdering monster because of what the monsters in my past did to me, but I figured it could definitely happen to the subject of this poem. And I also took something I saw on the telly about a madman tearing the faces off his victims (or something like that), gave it a slight twist, and added it to the brewing pot of bloody mayhem.
In a departure from my more typically supernatural dark verse, there is nothing otherworldly about the events in "Visages of Betrayal and Madness". The monsters this time around are decidedly human, not creatures from the shadow realm. I've written about human monsters before, but I don't do it very often. Perhaps it hits too close to home. After all, I grew up surrounded by plenty of examples of monstrous humanity.
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September 13th, 2009
01:21 pm - "Eldritch Mistress" Published in APHELION
My dark speculative cinquain "Eldritch Mistress" has been published in the September 2009 issue of the web-zine Aphelion. Check it out!
Yes, in a departure from my regular Aphelion scifaiku and horrorku publications, I have something slightly larger this time around. I like the form of the cinquan, although I don't profess to be any sort of expert at cinquain composition. Still, I find that I can typically say just a little bit more in a cinquain than I usually can in a haiku. In some ways, the cinquain form actually fits my style better than the haiku form. Maybe it's just symptomatic of my own limitations, but I often find haiku to be too restrictive. Cinquains let me explore the language of scenes, thoughts, and feelings just a little bit more.
As for this particular cinquain, I found inspiration in tales of fatally beautiful fairy loves, especially the Breton Korrigan temptress. She would sit beneath the dark forest canopy beside a ruined well, combing and braiding her golden hair. Through glamour she would transform mossy thicket into richly carpeted palace, only to have the spell broken by dawn's first light. I also added elements from the Manx Lhiannan-shee, the fairy muse that slowly drained life energies from poets and musicians.
And why eldritch, other than the fact that this happens to be one of my favourite words? Well, I'm trying to get extra power out of the title, treating it as part of the poem rather than just a tag. I feel that the possible root of eldritch, perhaps coming from the Middle English elfriche, meaning "fairyland", adds that fairy element missing in the poem itself (although hinted at in the use of the word fey). In my mind, fay equates to fairy; fey equates to doomed, visionary, or otherworldly, but not necessarily of fairyland. After all, fay is the old term for a denizen of fairyland; fairy (Fay-erie) was first used merely for a state of enchantment. And I'm none too fond of the modern preference for fae, a spelling that seems to simply be a shortening of the alternate spelling of fairy - faerie.
Current Mood: accomplished
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August 12th, 2009
07:29 pm - Roiling Gyre in APHELION
Will a gigantic cosmic whirlpool suck up the Earth at its aphelion? Or will the seas drain down a hole in the crust when the planet reaches its farthest distance from the Sun?
Actually, no. My mythic scifaiku "roiling gyre" now appears on-line in the web-zine Aphelion. And I make no apologies for flexing my vocabulary muscles in this one, fitting a couple of interesting words into three little lines. In case you are wondering, a gyre is a circular ocean current. Using perhaps a bit of poetic license, I can argue it is roughly synonymous with a gigantic whirlpool (I didn't want to use whirlpool, vortex, or maelstrom). And a trireme is an ancient war galley with three banks of oars.
And why "mythic", other than the general ancient feel created by my use of "trireme"? Because the myth of the Greek whirlpool monster Charybdis inspired this piece.
Alas, this may be my only poem published in the month of August. My roll is slowing to an eventual, inevitable end, due in no small part to the fact that I've switched gears and am now concentrating on art. I'm currently in the middle of a rather large art project (with others waiting in the wings), and I simply don't have much time (or energy, or inspiration) to compose poetry.
Then again, my muse may start pestering me any day now. She's like that.
Current Mood: geeky
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July 14th, 2009
11:50 am - "Electric Blue Sparks" in APHELION
My wizardly scifaiku "Electric Blue Sparks" now appears on-line in the July 2009 issue of the web-zine Aphelion. Check it out!
While I think the description is quite clear, I believe I leave it up to the reader to fill in the details of what specific action is actually taking place. Am I describing a wizard's own spell backfiring, or am I describing a rival's attack? I don't know if such a thing is necessarily proper for haiku and their speculative derivatives, but it seemed to work for this piece.
For someone who used to always play fighters in Dungeons & Dragons because all of his magic-user player characters died swift deaths, I do write quite a bit of wizardly verse. For some reason, I find sorcerers to be a great source of inspiration, poetically-speaking. Fighters apparently don't stir my muse the way wizards do.
Alas, I realized that this is my only poetry publication for the month of July (I had several illustrations published earlier this month). My poetry roll may be finally slowing to an eventual, inevitable end. I only have one poem scheduled for August publication, another scifaiku set to appear in Aphelion. And I found out that Issue 8 of The Monsters Next Door is scheduled to be released September 15th, so I will have at least one poem published in September. After that, I have a poem or two slated for publication in November, and one set to be published Spring 2010. Currently, I have nothing slated for publication in October or December.
Of course, much of this is my own fault. I'm terrible at multitasking. As I shift gears from poetry to art, my poetic productivity has been declining dramatically. As I spend more and more time on various illustration projects, I'm finding little inspiration to write more verse. I guess I'm one of those types that needs to concentrate most of his artistic energies on the task at hand, engrossed in a single-minded creative obsession.
Oh well. A while back, I did hear word from my publisher that she is hoping to release my illustrated dark speculative poetry collection in early 2010. That will go a long way in making up for any forthcoming poetry publication slump. And I do have another collection in the works, through another publisher. I just have to find the time to work on the large number of illustrations planned for this particular project.
Yes, more drawing. It seems as if I've truly become an artist who happens to write poetry, instead of the other way 'round.
Current Mood: accomplished
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