Shadow on the Waves

For a moment she floats
On a sea of mist and moonlight
Tangled her tattered charms
A theater of winter stars mirrors
Her grave like a gypsy's crystal ball
 
Brittle fingertips crack the surface
And skim the summit of her tomb
 
A clinging web of amber hair
Like the shreds of a bridal veil
Cover the finality that dances
Cold and breathless-blue in her eyes
Gossamer on black waves surge
Like an embittered, raging lover
 
Forced between her thighs.
Lapping at its sacrifice, the sea
Perversely ascends her radiance
And thrust her to its grave.

 

You can see the noose swaying in the breeze, feel the sting as the blade slices flesh, taste the blood dripping from fresh wounds, smell the rotting corpses and hear the screams of the tortured in her poetry.  Michelle Scalise uses and abuses the senses deliciously.  Others have discovered her way with words; over 100 of her poems and short stories have appeared in such magazines as Pirate Writings, Talebones, Edgar:  Digested Verse, Mindmares, Cabal Asylum, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Storisende (Germany) and Bloodream's Gothic Gateway anthology.
 

 

Noeud Coulant

A hangman's sky enswathed in gray
Wraps its silent winds around my heart
And strains me to the devil's shrine
To lick the gallows' thunderous steps
Sins bleed on passion's desolate lips
But oh divine a breath I stole
Like sonnets raped from an angel
To comfort a demon's fervid mind
                           To stroke the black keys of madness.
                                                       Twas not mercy
screaming feverishly
As I fed her wild-eyed to the stars.
My love damned her soul into me
And now like death's imprisoned beauty
                         She awaits me, a bride-like cameo
Her wedding pearls winding my throat
Her lover's vow a tortured, lavish plea
Till once more we may cry to the dark.
 

 

Michelle's love of horror started at an early age.  "When I was a kid I would watch old horror movies with my dad on Friday nights.  My favorite was anything that included castles and vampires.  They never scared me... actually, I was always rooting for Dracula.  I could never understand why in the end the heroine always chose the wimpy boyfriend over the vampire."  Why, indeed?  Her sympathy for devils clearly shows in her beautifully dark verse.
 

 

Ill-Formed Parts of a Dream

Wake the damned;
I close my eyes
And your mangled flesh
Like a nightmare's sentry
Forbidding my withdraw
Becomes a sin demanding
Clarity in black and white
Translucent as a water drop
The ill-formed parts of a dream
Obscured in a tangled grave
Beneath the tiger lily's roots
Moonlight can't dredge the depths
I've brought you to
Only your blood remains
Like virgin tears in the snow
But someday, love,
I may call forth
Your startled corpse
And let sunlight bleach the earth
From your eyes.
 

 

Influences in Michelle's writing include Byron, Shelley, Jane Austen, Beaudelaire, Anais Nin, Wilkie Colllins, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Irving, Lucy Taylor, Charlee Jacob, Anne Rice, Melanie Tem, Tom Piccirilli, Shirley Jackson, Tanith Lee, James Herbert and Poe.  "Each of those writers is capable of instilling their work with an extreme sense of passion.  That's what matters most to me."  Perhaps her most active influence is horror/mystery novelist Tom Piccirilli (a.k.a. her boyfriend.)   ". . .  his opinion is the only one I trust.  I show him all my work before I send it out.  He's a tough sell, but I'm a better writer for having known him."
 
 

 

 

If The Ledge Gives

He is in the walls calling to me
Like static and voices
Through a broken line
Then nothing but the silence
White as the porcelain shell of madness
And the wailing of the wind
Raping my mind
I dig my nails red into the ceiling,
Carve stars to light his grave
But I can't scream enough to drown
His aching song or bite deep enough
Into his plush wings to quiet my guilt.
And when he ask I blame another
Truth burning my cheek like wax tears
Was it you who licked the blade?
My lover cries, choking on the shroud
I feign sleep, pull nightmares to my arms;
Testing sanity on the ledge
And like a demon answering prayers
I grant him freedom in the flames.
 

 

Although she writes and has published some fiction, Michelle thinks of herself primarily as a poet.  "It's not a hobby or something I do for fun; it's who I am.  I think as a poet I see things differently.  Everything is a potential poem. . ."  Her writing atmosphere consists of music (Mazzy Star, The Changelings, or classical), soft lighting and incense.  Michelle also uses her writing talent as a form of therapy.  "It gives me the chance to exorcize whatever demons or frustrations happen to be haunting me at a particular time.  I can get into a fight with my boyfriend and an hour later have him burning at the stake or strung up with piano wire if I want.  Thankfully, he has a good sense of humor about this."

 

 
 

Clutching a Broken Hand

Another vulture's come to perch
upon her bedpost; Perhaps they hear
me stumble in her night and for a moment
her flight through stars and madness is
stilled. My anger, like a chisel to her
porcelain cheeks, calling her back
scorched and sterile by the flames
somewhere in her shadow she remains
a sleeping doll with a broken smile and
eyelashes gnawed off like weeds.
She dreams in grey. Dementia's
Botticelli-lips more tangible than
mine, whisper their own unintelligible
prayers and she hums along a repetitive
note of insanity. Depths of red. She swims
a poisoned womb sustained with voices
more brilliant than ever scarred
a martyr's mind; waving her along
their windswept cliff and her descent
goes on forever.
 

 

When gazing into the future, Michelle sees herself as "older, stronger and roaming around a house overrun with books and pets.  I'll still be writing, of course, and will hopefully have a couple of collections out by then."  All those books will probably come from the many hours she spends in used book stores.  If  that future could be twisted slightly into the fantastic, she says she'd "live in a castle overlooking the sea in Ireland or Scotland [in] any time period that poets had patrons financially supporting them. . ."  That castle had better come equipped with satellite television, for Michelle admits to being addicted to Mystery Science Theater.

 

 

Aria

Dissonant notes
Draw all to the grave
Where arias rise
With the moon
And wrap round the soul
Like winding shrouds
Trailing
The soprano's pale arms
Tis faint
The chorus of the damned
Little more than the
Lark's cradlesong
Yet the nocturne whisper
Seems a straining scream
When the notes
Of the requiem
Cry for thee.
 

 

About the Author:

Michelle Scalise has sold over 100 poems and short stories to such magazines as Pirate Writings, Talebones, Epitaph, Edgar:  Digested Verse, Roadworks, Deadly Nightshade, Mindmares, Gentlemen's Cabaret, Cabal Asylum, 69 Flavors Of Paranoia (and their extreme horror issue 'If'), Twisted Devotion, Dark Planet, Moonshade, Outer Darkness, Storisende (Germany), XX magazine and Bloodream's Gothic Gateway Anthology.