Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 26: The Ring of Gyges

| October 26, 2013

I believe in the spirit of Man as well as the matter. I have seen great courage in men, and women, too;seen them do great things for each other, for their nations, for the world, with a kind of selfless vision that cannot be accounted for by the base, brute self-interest of the body. But […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 25: Fecal Matters

| October 25, 2013

Today’s Dark Sentiment may or may not be appropriately titled, but no matter. What follows was inspired by SFM, and led to me turning an old joke I heard a long time ago from a Bermudian broadcaster into a poem that ends with poop. Before that though, it has a near death experience, rescue, bad […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 21: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

| October 21, 2013

The title of an article by Hadley Freeman published last August in The Guardian refers to Warren Zevon as “… the man behind the demons”. I will be forever grateful to Ms. Freeman for the revelation because I was wondering who to blame for that. The title of today’s Dark Sentiment is taken from that […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 20: Cold Iron and the Veil

| October 20, 2013

The lore surrounding iron goes back into antiquity, and many are the beliefs that trust it to have the power to ward off evils from the supernatural realm. The intention to keep the dead at rest is why cemeteries, and even individual graves of a certain age, are often contained within iron fences – both […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 19: The Suicide Brothers

| October 19, 2013

The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers is a short film by Beat Pictures, in association with JMM Film and Kompass Pictures, starring Rupert Friend, Tom Mison and Keira Knightley. A darkly comic fairytale set somewhere between the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm and Tim Burton, The Continuing and Lamentable […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 18: The Dog in the Tempest

| October 18, 2013

On Sunday (Julian calendar) the 4th day of August in 1577, a thunder storm of wrath of God proportions unleashed its fury between the morning hours of 9 and 10 o’clock over Suffolk, England. Within four weeks of that event, a slim volume titled Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 17: Faulkner Was Right

| October 17, 2013

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain” ~ William Faulkner This poem was inspired by personally experienced actual events that played out way back in the mid 1980’s. I have never been so happy to be in the grip of the worst physical pain I have ever experienced, […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 16: The Dark Side of Child Rearing

| October 16, 2013

“During the second half of the nineteenth century, death was the ultimate act of nature—beyond human control and ever present. The death rate of infants were so high that babies were often not given names until they were one year old, and the death of infants were often unrecorded. The ubiquity of death, due in […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 15: Indestructible Sam

| October 15, 2013

Samuel Dombey was a black man living in New Orleans following the Civil War. Times were tough in the south, but Sam continued to bring money in by digging graves. He did an excellent job and his price was much lower that the competing gravediggers in the New Orleans area. In time, the lower prices […]

Dark Sentiments 2013 – Day 9: Your REAL Net Worth

| October 9, 2013

Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me a warped, frustrated, old man! What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. No securities, […]