The Macabre Poems [Part one: 17 poems]




The Macabre Poems

1) The Unreal

Because you do not see—
Evil says: conscience is dead!
Aye! it is the insight of madness
Penetrating the veils of untruth—
For few are we:
For many are they….

2) Space Vampire

O solar mass, pull back:
black holes far and near—
those vampires—
devour stars like spiders bugs
Storms that sunder birds,
they, they are the curse
of the universe.

3) Otherwhere

I
Long ago, longer than—
Before a beast or man was born—
He chose for his
The hate whereto old evil clings,
With lusting angels stripped of wings
With Michael’s flaming hatred divine:
The hate whereto old evil clings,
It was thine, it was mine.

II
Have we not known,
O demos, débil O Satán:
The hate that creeps within your soul?
In evil your ally will go, never alone,
For the wingless that must devour
Will be waiting with hearts of stone,
Joy and laughter, and corruption—
And ill bliss, your dark lovers of the feast.
Yea! Lo, your own crimson bells
Ring for Satanic hell.

4) The Waking World

Out of time’s windows
He gazed—into the heavens,
Into planets, unnamed galaxies
—Light-years away,
With sealed vistas
That opened wide
For the macabre-naked eye—to see.
And unto him appeared—
Wild streams of midnight tears
Glittering like unprotected fire:
And so spellbound was he,
With all he had seen,
He crossed into the dream world,
The lost world of the woken:
And was never again seen.

5) The Glass Lyre

They fail to hear the glass lyre,
Its echoes, tarnished strings—
Where shadows ring.

6) The Stone Maya

Owls of the world,
Do not dream like fools—
Life’s delusions are real:
And evil was learned—

(We are but grasshoppers Carved of stone).

I, for one, in darkness spun
(In deep temples of Tikal)
Echo with oblivion:
Delusions, illusion, fantasies—
Rising shadows no one can see.

7) Shadow-Gables

The young man leered and tittered along
haze-cloaked Riverside Street
with heavy padding feet;
tottering by houses on both sides:
as he passed them, they came alive.

Fresh walls of morbid evil,
shadows on gables,
window-eyes leered and reeked
in a black-wind of blasphemous runes.

House, street, padding feet:
intruding chimes: now! now –
a familiar sign, clutching at him….

8) Soul of the Devil (Ritual of the Macabre)

Subterranean evil
Lurks in the maggoty pale light
Of the sunless waters
Beneath the insidious city,
Where mirrored reflections
And pungent odors reside:
And decay grows;
Where my forefathers lived
With primal rites…and still do.

The lyre, flute—I could hear!—
In the distance, called me….
To its toadless shores,
In this unhallowed earth
Cloaked in throngs.

There I saw the pillar of flame,
Where darkness was on fire:
Casting no shadows, in its
Calmness to death…

The horde—unwinged beings,
Hybrid things, appeared—
Lotus Demons with two limbs,
Scorpion-like tails, thin;
Into the volcanic river they sang,
Enchantments, frightful things.

I wanted to ride the beast—
It tempted me, with wart-filled eyes:
Oozing at my flesh, staggered
To my thighs—then disappeared.

I shuddered restlessly—
Until it was best forgotten.

9) The Eldritch Tombs

Is this hell? Shapes bend, like the wind
Gates lie still, lurk around corners
And foul beings, never seen, never die.

Here, hounding doom fills nameless tombs,
Where esoteric manuscripts
Dare to tell the dread—what lies ahead.

There amid many, strange things I found—
Raving of madmen, curses and clowns:
Black books, stones, legends and frowns.

◊

Out from this path in Witch-Town I crawled—
An ominous name—not to be found—
And in solitude I write this down….

Haunted by monstrous nightmares,
On a monolithic, rampant night:
Drowsy, dreamy, I say good-night.

10) Death and Tears

All the words that wake the dead
Have now been said—
Now you must paint with tears.

11) Open

12) Dragon Wings

Like piled leaves in late autumn,
Dragon wings of crimson gold—
Days are few….

13) Beauty’s Incarceration

The prisoner is beauty,
So they say:
Thus, I have captured her today.

Ecuador, 4/25/04

14) The Vanishing Dead

Come ride with me
(If you dare)—
On wingless angels
(That never cared);
To my doom, to my doom—
While the sunset still is there:
Darkened settings, everywhere.

The gloom of the Moon,
Immortals—dying;
What beauty in obscurity…

I am the falling star,
Expiring; the haunting light,
I will come for you tonight.

St. Paul, Minnesota, 5/5/04

Note: This poem was inspired by the cover art of a book, by the Peruvian Artist [Arvieh].

15) A Demon’s Ark

(The Lotus Demon of Mercury)

Born from the horns
Of a wingless archangel,
With the pulse
Of perpetual night—
Lo, lifts the demonic horizon:
Immortalities’ jagged plight.

16) The Misbegotten Species (The Minds of Saturn

((Demons)) of the Ancient legendaries)

[Note: the Minds—a mere remnant of a low degraded horde of demonic-angelic beings—aborigines, one might say—whom comb the utter darkness of outer space for brute-hood, and thus, found Mercury’s inhabitants by chance, residing within an ancient giant crater. Thus, here is the story of a vanishing race that takes place: of which Zoov ‘al the leader, led seven and twenty ((Saturn-lites)), of his followers into the escalade.]

An Epic (Tale) Poem

[Mercury-lites]

Faded, dried and burnt, bear-rat meat,
Light-white, flowery, solar wine—
Volcanic walls all around them,
Hollow lava caves: occupied ….

*

[Saturn-lites]

Rodent-pelts over their shoulders
(Deemed, by most, most dangerous of all):
Demonic invaders from Saturn—
Well armed and accouterred:

Ropes and chains, knifes and swords:
Hooks and nails, crossbows and boards,
All warriors wore human fleece:
All warriors had studded-saber teeth.

*

All the warriors stood stone-still, silent
On the great volcanic rim of Mercury—
Black lava, eons cold and old,
The zenith: cloudless and frozen.

*

And then the sun rose high overhead,
The ancient legendaries swore
Countless blasphemies to the Godhead:
“Above—below—God is no more!”

Unnecessary: they hurled blocks—
Blocks of disdain inside their chest

(Arousing a battle cry—at best)

Like the flaming furnace in the sky—
The demons waited—with raging eyes.

*

This day, within the crater’s deep,
No hungry voices heard from below—
Hence—the invaders crept with light feet
Upon the sleeping (wine-filled) souls….

Lo!—caves that once were home became
Graves—alas!—by these demonic-beings
As up they crept, unto the sleeping prey
Of Mercury—this, this very day.

*

[The Feast of Saturn’s Henchman]

The vile eating habits of the demon:
Compulsively draining marrow
(Drinking bones: pale-dry, flushed-clean),
Ripping flesh and eyes, ribs and thighs

(Atrocious creatures of Primal Time).

*

[Then]

Black altars were placed upon the sand:
Came, demonic prayers with clasped hands,
Unto the Henchman—of hell—Agaliarept,
And the Ten-winged serpent—they bowed.

*

[Zoov ‘al’s epitaph]

Zoov bellowed with grasping lizard hands
(Heartily) after throwing rocks on skulls—
Clattering loudly his feet, he screamed:
“I am the god of Mercury, the god of all!”

The rim of the volcano trembled
(Mysteriously, unrepentant)
From its stomach came smoke and stone,
Lava, gases and boulders—a tomb.

Then a queer-colored blaze multiplied,
Dropped into veins of mud—
Into volcanic pits, of the dead;
Thus, sealing all, with a lid.

17) The Oarsman

The Oarsman at the oars,
The Arctic winds, the galley,
Captain at the helm,

The ghosts of leprosy,
The dead men from the sea,
No sun, pestilence:

All could see the cliff-tower—
The hour draws near—to trembling
Hissing—from the oarsman’s lips;

Passengers bellow—with Arctic eyes
Oozing the demon with a kiss,
Coming closer to land and mist;

The dead sit up within the boat,
The Polar-demon rows and rows;
Utter cold, no miracles—

Lo, the harbor: the oars stop—
Deadly—deadly—no one talks;
Iceberg-eyeballs—stare and stare;

A tide of intolerable silence
Flows and ebbs, and flows again
For Hell’s henchman: Agaliarept.

Flung to the wide side of the vessel,
“You will serve me well,” he echoes:
The voyage is now final.

Originally in: “The Eldritch Dark,” (March 2004), and Who’s Who in Poetry