Ralph Vaughan Poems

The skull is small, precious, fragile;
It is delicate as a raven’s egg
Fallen from a nest of encircled thorns,
Now half-buried in the loamy swamp,
...

Glittering skeletons, bone-men with fireball eyes,
Slip from out the shadows, dark capes obscuring famous faces
That would be instantly recognized under flickering blue skies,
Lightning-lashed heavens as Quetzalcoatl thrashes
...

The wall is cracked and broken,
Wire atop just coiled rust,
Potentially falling dust
At the touch of brown fingers
...

The djinns are restless in their sandy beds
And fitful in their blue-lit mountain grottoes;
But the always-insomniac urban djinns,
Swilling too-strong coffee and smoking black russian cigarettes,
...

The Doctor escapes the Space Rhino Cops,
But then the sucking octogenarian plasmavore –
Here the grid cracks and fractures,
Spindled folded and mutilated
...

The day of anointing looms as a disc of bronze;
Smoke rises from myriad cities,
Habitations of jackals and fine young cannibals
Who smote the midas merchants at leaping pyres,
...

The Emperor nears the horizon,
The Guide awaits his approach
Scroll in hand,
Dark like river mud;
...