More Gothic Poems

Rhys Hughes

I am progressing in my endeavour to write 77 Gothic poems and I must confess to feeling pleased with what I have produced so far. The imagery is mostly dark, of course, but there is mystery as well as horror: unresolved enigmas. Not every poem is a story. Some might be impressions, muddled or precise, or may offer a hint or selection of hints, rather than describe a situation. Having said that, there will be narrative poems aplenty in the completed set of poems. Here are another five examples of the work in progress….

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The Flower

The flower is dead

and you resemble that bloom

shut up in you room

where the sun never shines:

collapsing, wilting,

turning black in the thin cracks

that crawl over your skin.

Your malnourished body

is like a stem: I can encircle

your waist with one hand,

but the waste in your face

deters me from embracing you

in the enclosed space,

your shuttered, dreadful place.

The gardener is coming

to remove the flower forever,

each blade of his shears

is the crescent of an old scythe:

yet the expression you wear

persuades me again that

the reaper will leave you alive.

The Pendulum

The hanged man

swings slowly through the night

and we who sleep

below the gallows

are gently lulled by the creak of

the rope that itself

in bonus mockery

was braided from dead men’s hair.

The time that tells itself

never dares be

inaccurate: in hell the flames climb

and lick the feet

of the pendulum, the flesh

and bones beneath,

and still we sleep: the travellers on

this timeless road.

The Bandit Cave

They are festive in the firelight

and gambol through the smoke

of damp sticks,

the spluttering, crackling blaze

guarding the mouth of the cave.

Wet boughs cut from sick trees

with scimitars

like the legs sliced at the knees

of unfortunate

travellers: the robbers celebrate.

At the back of their hiding place

can be found the ill-gotten gains

gathered over

many years: flamboyantly sordid

and rotten, all glistening like tears.

The bandits dance away the hours

after midnight

until those things outside the cave

become milder

in the sacred rash of a fresh dawn.

The things that are half unformed,

that dreadfully twist as they move,

cutting grooves

in blood-soaked soil with mutated

feet that resemble ghastly hooves.

The creatures with fewer features

on tortured faces

than any goblins, ghouls or ghosts

can possess that

their unsettled dreams might evoke.

The entities that need no shelter,

the creatures that once were men,

vengeful victims

of the villains: who still are said

to yearn to settle burning hatreds.

So the bandits dance: what else?

Drunk, oblivious,

knowing that one night the game

of knife and gun

shall be considered over for them.

Iceman

In the depths of a glacier

I see a man

and he can see me

and while he gapes wordlessly

I consider my position.

He has been frozen there

ten centuries

or more: civilisation

and its wars have passed him by.

So what is my mission?

To free him with a hatchet

blow by blow,

thaw him with a fire,

and hurl him back into the world,

the wolves of his desire?

No, I cannot do this task,

no matter how

loudly he wordlessly

asks: a path was chosen long ago

for him: I must turn to go.

Frozen forever, his destiny,

hateful his eyes,

but are we not unwise

to believe we are freer than he is?

We are glaciated by fate.

The Cupboard

The cupboard was locked.

It had been there in a corner of the attic

for as long as I could recall.

I had often wondered

what it contained: the key was missing,

a mystery sufficient

to trouble hairs on the nape of my neck.

The next step was to force

the lock: to wreck the painstaking work

of some ancient craftsman.

I used an iron crowbar

to splinter wood: the feeling was good,

until I peered within,

and then I grimaced, hideously grinned.

Inside

was nothing but the key,

the key to the very lock,

a key unlike any I had seen before

and it had

the shape of me.