The Macabre Poems [Part Three: poems: 34-56]



34) Eros Ploy

From her mind to her clitoris,
To her nipples and lips,
Wooed like a bird perched on a stick:
She melted like butter
Until there was no other.

35) Tagaririm (Arch devil Belphegor)

He speaks only in Aramaic, calling up the dead—
For vagary, spells and signs, to hide
The Atziloth scrolls, until the four heavens divide,
Until—until the end of time….

From different worlds, his powers come—
Briah, Yetzirah and Asiah—where immortal veils
Never meet (Neschamah, Ruach and Nephesch);
And questing armies never die.

Lo, Samaul, Evil Spirit of the soul, waits for thee,
Thy signature O Belphegor—
To unroll the scroll,
Bearing the names of angelic beings and demonic foes.

36) Dream Maker [Part 1 of 5]

Who crafts a dream
Puts us to sleep!
What ear shall hear
Or balance meet—
To wake us up
Upon our feet?

II: Comes the Dream

Comes the dream,
An inkling memory
Sealed tight—clasping
In a darkened room
(In soul-vaults).

III: Ancient Scrolls

Endless mysteries
Of the spirit’s plight
Weave the inner twilight.
Unending suns—gloom!
Ancient dreams and scrolls….

IV: Sleeping Mind

In each sleeping mind,
Light can seldom find
The formless decay,
Of ones dragging worlds
To be left, behind;

For heaven’s melody,
Darkness lurks
As the mind hovers:
The strains seep out—
Lo! Bend the vine:
Let the sunsets in, Awaken
(All’s forgotten).

V: Lonely, Lost

The Dream-maker shouts:
“I found songs unsung,”
Lonely, lost a while,
Unto and into thy grief,
Thy grief, my grief now sung.

Ah! Death has lost its sting:
And dreams have lost
Their pulse—
“Thou shalt not wake this time,”
The Dream-maker shouts.

37) The Macabre Serpent of Space

With chilling sarcophagus grimace,
The ill-omen serpent appeared
From out of the shadows of space…

Lo! More ancient than man, it thirsts for a name
A place in unutterable space—
Yet, only blackness—cul-de-sac….

38) C.A. Smith

The cypress blows over my grave:
Oh would I hide from you—
Yet I write…all the same.

Ah! –I am a ghost:
With shadows above me—
And demon ears below.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website; a favorite of my friend’s, Phillip Ellis.

39) I. The Woods in the Sea

Upon the throne, of the moon,
Across the land, into the sea,
He treads: walks endlessly
For the entire world to see.

The wind is from the north,
The bright stars rest in the west,
The gift of second-sight
Resides within his chest.

He knows he cannot rest—
For unseen shores yet to come
From lands both dim and gray,
Lands of new outcomes.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website 6/04

40) II: Shadow of Fate

If one lives with the god of hate,
High or low be he,
Such is his fate….

41) III: Talons

I will weave the pale shadows
(Time lost, time forgotten—):
All into pallid brows
Onto the stranger’s talons:
While I sink into the board-walk—
Let him tell his tall tales.

42) IV: Wild Stones

Who is the witch, the demon—
The culprit and the ghoul?
I could not tell for the life of me:
So I forgave them, one and all.

And then I slept a long sleep
(Forgiving is quite a chore)—
Then, when I woke to meet the day,
Love had conquered all.

43) V: Satan’s Sidekick’s

The men that chum with Satan—
Their hearts cannot forgive;
They see no more in love,
Than mercy can see to give.

The men that chum with Satan—
Their gods are many and small;
They drift away like white ghosts
Climbing demonic walls.

The men that chum with Satan—
Seldom can they sleep;
And through their nightmare visions,
With flames and smoke they leap.

They walk the earth alone—they do,
Strange, deep with palest eyes.
Always thinking they were cheated:
With footsteps dogged by lies.

And in the halls of Belshazzar—
Their ghostly eons twist and twine;
Always knowing naught of hope,
Beyond the blazing line.

44) VI The Great Flood of ’51

The night is dark, the Mississippi
Lies asleep;
Velvet mists veil the blood-spattered moon
(With hoary strange eyes):
Restless with hazy fear, and slumber
Of her sleep
(White thunder in the skies).
She hears the whisper of the
Ghostly storm (booming far—
Encircling near)
Glide overnight—overhead—ready:
To be born (like a hammer of Thor).
“I shall go forth!” she hears:
And down the scarlet veil, hails
Triumph is in its roar—the storm:

Roads, men, levee and homes—
Cliffs and bridges tossed about:
The untamable god has freed the clouds.

Continuation from the: Macabre Poems

45) Poe’s Legacy

If Poe hadn’t have been born—

There’d have been no rapping or tapping—
(at least for a while—at my door?)
Nor would there had been morbid beauty
with depth and sin…
That circles the globe—nor HPL and CAS.
What a mundane life (it would have been)
without the devil’s pen.

I gripped the legacy: lying on savage ground,
the third-eye of the hunter, filled with wax—
calls for breath, in the silent Valley of Shock;
thus, stung—I remain, by the fruitless trees
of horror—then I hear a whisper:

“Lord, help my poor soul.”

June 4 2004

Inspired by Phillip Ellis.

46) Loving in Limbo

Mother! Mother!
My precious one!
To whose dearest love Will harmony run?
Oh! Thy will it is
In the winters to cross
Or lay simply still
Like October’s frost;
Now my form is cold—
(As in trance I’m snared)
Keeping heart and soul
With songs threadbare?

June 6 2004

47) Mystery of Mysteries

We’re born alone, as shall we die
Looking at the hour of drifting—
A Mystery of Mysteries!
We are pitifully helpless things….

The Watchman’s guardian eye,
For Him—it is not loneliness;
The drumming of the unguided
Lends allurement—with chanting nearby.
In life and death, two faces pry;
One shall overshadow: they cry

Be it night or day, though face may frown,
Unready for the final dawn
And pandemonium near, throbbing:
Comes the drifting of the hour—
As we’re born, we die: alone—
A Mystery of Mysteries!

48) Rosinina Tapi of the Sacred Valley

It was long, long, so long ago
in the Sacred Valley of Peru,
wherein a maiden lived, no one really knew,
by the name of Rosinina Tapi—
and this maiden lived with no other thought:
than to live out her life within this sacred spot.

I was a Prince and She was to be,
in this kingdom of the Sacred Valley;
we fell in love: ardent and unconditionally,
I and my Princess to be—
with a cherished worship, that only Heaven
could see.

And so it was, that long, long ago
in this kingdom in the Sacred Valley
a ghostly wind blew to and fro
(out of a void no one knew):
after my lovely Rosinina Tapi,
thus inspiring her kinsmen
to take her away from me.
They hence shut her up—in a eerie vault
Within the kingdom of the Valley.

Ah! the devils, the devils, that dwelt in Hell,
Were envying her and I—
Oh yes!—‘twas their quest
(as all knew within the Sacred Valley),
that the ghostly wind that blew to and fro
through the cracks of the earth:
had seized and killed my Rosinina Tapi.

And sad was I, to bury my dreams,
(such memories that had to be):
and under the moonbeams, my beautiful Rosinina Tapi
was buried within the Sacred Valley.

49) The Ancient Sharra

You that rest in utter and gloomful darkness
Who come from the middle of the world—
The Sharra Indians with shrunken heads,
Colored feathers, blow-guns with
Fearful darts,
Along the equator’s rim—that doesn’t spin—
To you I pour forth my autumn nights.

Note: 4/20/04: written during a visit at the Middle of the World at the Ecuador (000)

50) Satan’s Galapagos

By the dark shadows
Vowed to Lucifer,
By his sealed prophets
Foreshown,
By these, by these I claim
Thee—
By trickery, wine and sorcery—
I have tried to bend thy
Footsteps
In the peaceful Galapagos.

April 24 2004; Lima, Peru

Note: written returning from the Galapagos, to Lima, Peru; many strange and disruptive incidents, occurred.

51) Fading Worlds

Behind a great shadow,
A world fades—
This is the price of beauty—
How many stars are lost
This way—
Lost within the oceans,
Fading skies?
So many lost worlds… die….

In memoriam Clark Ashton Smith April 10 2004, Lima, Peru; revised May 5 2004.

52) Lost Souls

Shadows of the lost souls,
If you call on them,
Will never let you go.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru

53) The Goat man’s Fancy

She heard the coming of the Doom—
In the silence still of the moon—
For, half-enchanted with his stars
In the twilight of his youth,
To the desert he did part.

Now, with the moon unlit,
He left her heart…
As if she was to mutter on
And sing his starry, lonesome song!

Henceforth triumphant
Was the Devil’s rose:
For she poured his devilish poisons, cold—
And muttered on, to a new moon….

54) The Hoofed Demon

He heard me not, nor saw
Knowing my presence as he should:
He whispered.

*Ecuador, Quito, 4/25/04

55) Buried Souls

And there his sarcophagus lay—
Beneath the towering mountains—
Stretching out of the deep, dark sea
(With all its weight, sealing his fate),
No light, no day, only binding chains.
Lost, forgotten in the sand’s density…

Where no travelers have yet been,
No roads or skies to befriend,
Faceless skeletons, silent voices:
They all embraced in this veil of dark
— Embraced by looks: face to face—
Hungry to fill the emptiness of space.

April 1 2004, St. Paul, Minnesota

56) The Pale Horse of Rano Raraku

Jesus said: “Know what is before your face and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you;” From: ‘the Gospel of Thomas’.

It is to you, to you among the living that I write; for indeed, I may be dead, and am of little concern if so. For the years now that are in the past, the last few in particular, have been years of terror, of intense dread, as circles the world this very moment, to escalate, I do believe—escalate around the globe, and so I write this by inspiration of a story I heard:

Into and onto the Isla de Pascua,
Navel of the world (window to the Pacific)—
Whose Moai Eyes of towering volcanic stones
Look towards the Heavens,
As if their spirits were trapped, bound within,
Afraid, fearful, frightened, to leave their stone abode,
To face their worldly sins—

Thus, rides the Pale Horse of Rano Raraku’s rim —of Rano Raraku’s rim.

Ah, distinctly, eagerly, pacing,
‘Tis a visitor who comes racing—
Into and onto the whisper of Rano Raraku
To catch the first glimpse,
The very first glimpse, peep, and hint… of Apocalypse—
Deception and pestilence travel with him,
The Pale Horse: Tribulation—

Whence comes hail and fire from above, mixed with blood;
The sun, moon and stars darken.

Henceforth, the Pale Horse comes racing, riding,
From the rim of this wondrous volcanic site.
The seventh trumpet is now ready to be blown,
The woes and vials to be poured:
Within the magic and mystery of this story
Rides the Pale Horse dying, dying, dying—dead,
On the rim of Rano Raraku;

Watching, watching—the stranger, Austrian, grim:
Thus comes the world’s sins;

As he witnesses the pain—the horse’s message:

“The God-King is not dead—
The God-King is coming….”

Inspired by my poet friend, Johannes [2004]