Dancing angels and a murder ballad. By Dennis Moriarty

The fire is fed, the whisky poured,

the joint rolled.

I poke, sip and inhale, watching a

clock that does not tick,

a pendulum that does not swing, time

tonight is on my side.

I sing along to a murder ballad, my

finger poised

on the trigger of an imaginary gun, a

midnight showdown

on my lips. The room flickers in the

shadows cast by firelight,

the hearth a stage occupied by a 70’s

dance troupe of angels

gyrating with the devil. I hear spiders

spinning their webs,

talking out loud, openly discussing my

state of mind.

Suddenly the clock begins to tick, the

pendulum swing

between sanity and madness, time no

longer on my side. I squeeze

the trigger and the song lays dying on

on my lips, the fire spits

and hisses like a snake on speed.

The spiders scream

in an agony of their own spinning.

The glass is drained,

the joint smoked, ash falling, silent as

snowflakes from the tip

and through the grate. The angels are

consumed by flames.

I close my eyes to the crackle of the

devil’s laughter.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.

In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.