Scorn & Contempt: Poems for the fragile and broken

By Darius McCaskey

Scorn & Contempt contains over three dozen poems written for the fragile souls author Darius McCaskey considers his tribe. Within its pages are reflections on our similarly broken world: an unflinching eye gazes on climate change and pollution, political strife, toxic relationships, and abuse. Conflict splinters inner lives and outer façades, leaving scorn and contempt to erupt from the fractures. Surrounded by ugliness, pain, and trauma, one can still find beauty, healing, and peace in the quest for truth. The poems in Scorn & Contempt are meant to be a way station for the battered and bruised in need of respite on their eternal journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312714595

Darius McCaskey

Darius McCaskey is a poet, game publisher, editor and ordained minister. His previous work includes several published poems, as well as editing and supplemental writing for the Contagion role-playing game published by Aegis Studios. Darius lives in northern Illinois with his wife and young daughter who are endless sources of inspiration.

Book preview

Exercise in Exorcism

Our Father, who aren't in Heaven

Hollow be thy name

Absent so you can't take the blame

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

So in and so out

Filled with unrelenting doubt

No escaping this time

Sent in Daniel's stead

Den of lions in my head

No angel to save me from rending fang

So out and so in

Tainted by another's sin

A crown of thorns, stigmatized

I never knew the rosary

Doubt it could've saved me

Oh Lord, why hast I forsaken thee?

So right and so left

Guilty of spiritual theft

Sacrificial ram to the slaughter

Some demons have no horns, only lies

And somewhere a part of that altar boy dies

Yet the choir sings on

So left and so right

One less monster in the night

The Beauty of a Poisoned Sky

The sun rakes

across the wrist of the sky,

spilling bloody reds

and oranges into the eye:

a self-assisted suicide.

Puffy clouds

of black and grey

rain hydrochloric drops

of acidic spray:

both cause and effect.

Trees send branches

to purify

the poisoned air

in the poisoned sky:

doomed to failure.

A peal of thunder,

like a tolling bell,

sounds the start

of descent to Hell:

a one-way ticket.

Turbines spin

across the sky,

lighted like a

Cyclopean eye:

too little, too late.

Diverse particulates

diffuse