Unbent
Unbroken
Uncurled
Barrier
Bordered
Bricks
Plump
Line
Uniform
Conform
Horizontal
Rows
Red
White
Black
Yellow
Old gatehouse
Turret
Two
Square
Vertical
Buttress
Meron
Crenel
Cross
Arched
Window
Light
Lancet
Oculus torus
Above
Below
Direct
True
Pivot
Straight
Ahead
Open
Main entrance
Close
Wooden door
Fortress
Template
Mould
Form
Order
Shapes
System

Walton Jail

Prisoner
In Walton Jail
Since 1885
Prisoners wait
To enter the fortress wooden gate
Cubed with fate
Coiled with hate
Prisoners wait
Behind a censorial gate
And contemplate
Confined
In platitude
Last rites
Are served
In solitude
Somber shadows of sinister stripes
Light up the window
Out of site
Time
Tolls
For the morning light
When the dangling noose
Holds the prisoner tight
The trap door is open
The crowds roar
With delight
As the prisoner’s neck is broken
The gate of hell is open
With a heady heart
The crowds depart
Knowing that the prisoner
Has played his last part

Look children

Grandma motions to faceless hands
Waving from the nameless shadows
Of a loophole window
Return their wave
Like your dad once did
When he passed his time away
By playing outside the closed gate of Walton Jail
On a bright summers holiday

Let me tell you another tale…

Grandma’s voice suddenly fractured
Children hold on tight to the Liver Birds neck
Shivering
A disturbing turbulence
Traveled over the Liver Birds struggling bodies
Quills stood on end
As a sudden sharp blade of slicing wind
Sheared

From a sheath of frigid air
Keylara trembled
And quivered in its cutting gust
Frozen
In motion
Keylara spiraled
Down
Down
Down
Into a deep plummet
Struggling
With spirit and strength
She battled with fear
Down
Down
Down
Towards Queens Drive

Grandma

Screamed to them
Over there
It’s Cherry Lane
Oh no
It’s the Walton Hall Curse
This is not an air current
This is
The Bogart
Hold on girls
Shu will break your fall

Shu

Edged his way
Out of the menacing turbulence
With a forceful waving motion
He blasted
Through the icy currents of impregnable air
Like a guided green tomahawk
He swept under Keylaras wavering wings
Waxed
With wing
He did not wane
Under Keylara’s flaying body
Shu was able to stop the downward pull
With titanic strength
He held onto Keylara’s wearisome wings
While his body
Struggled with the dragging current
In an instant

He was able to grip Keylara’s sagging body
And pull her out of her spectral spell
With a tremendous thrust
Shu was able to pass the meadow
On Queens Drive
And veer away from the on coming traffic
On the west side of Cherry Lane

The Black Spot

An ominous location
For unexpected motor accidents

Sweeping
Up to the sky
Now safe in flight
Grandma told the children about the Bogart and the

Walton Hall Curse

Tale
Truth or myth
Its real to the people
Who once lived in the estate of Gilbert de Walton
In the twelfth century
Gilbert had a wild and unruly son
Sending him to Ireland in 1185
With the hope that he would settle his disapproving ways

Richard

Was his name
And he was eighteen
After a year in Ireland
He returned
Still a wild thorn
Bent on cruelty
He pricked with pain

Returning

With a young Irish colleen
Captured
For sadistic pleasure
He tied her to his horse’s stirrup
And made her walk
Run and crawl behind his hired horse
While he bestrides his black beast of burden
Through meadows and streams
With thorn and stubble
Colleens
Footing
Arched with fear

Submitted to pain
Footing
Soled with struggle
Succumbed into submission
The bonded colleen
Fell
Stumbling on a stump
The wild black beast

Fell

The rider in rage
Slew the subordinate
Colleen
Unconscious
Richard hacked her to death
With his bloody steel sword
He severed her neck
As her fair paled body writhed
Into a torturous sack of death

Still

Moving
With a sudden tremor
Richard dragged the warm Colleen
And kicked her into the thirsty stream
Watching
On the bracken bank of the bridle path
Now known as Cherry Lane

Adrift

In a haunting haze
The young alb scent colleen floated
Downstream
Like the beautiful Ophelia
Lost in a mist of entanglement
Her body
Dammed
Leaving
Her splaying strands of auburn hair in floatation
To splay into a snare of snigs and sprigs
Tugging and twisting
Ponds of blood
Haloed her hallowed head
As swift currents
Ravaged
And raped her stinking corpse