Gothic Poems For November

Rhys Hughes

The Toad

Florian heard a weird tale

when he was rather young

from his uncle, who said:

I was an amateur geologist

at university, although I was

supposed to be studying the

science and art of medicine.

But I preferred the outdoors

to the stuffy dissecting room

and I mostly failed to attend

lectures and demonstrations.

I would hike into the hills or

mountains instead and spend

whole days among the rocks

far from city life and clocks.

And once I broke open a stone

with my hammer and found a

toad inside. It was alive, very

ancient, an odd sentient fossil.

For tens of millions of years it

had been preserved, entombed,

imprisoned, damned to a minor

hell. But it was well, it hopped.

I watched as it vanished among

the rubble, free at last from the

metamorphic troubles, whatever

those might be, it had endured.

And for some reason the incident

hurt my mind. I was blind with a

deep fear I had never felt before,

a terror blended with melancholy.

I stumbled away from the site of

my discovery: my own sight was

dim, tears of despair lashing my

face. Existence seemed a waste.

What are we humans, other than

toads inside our own tombs? An

illusion of liberty keeps us sane,

yet we remain horribly arrogant.

Delusional our intellects, caged

by slimy brains, toad-textured, a

world of craniums stuffed with

indigestible intestines of thought.

My depression endured seasons

but never could I proffer reasons

for my suspicion that our skulls

are hollow stones, not just bones.

Yet I recovered in time: I grew

intolerant of my delicate moods,

I returned to my hobby, breaking

stones, chancing on new fossils.

Then one day I met a sculptor in

a gallery who had suffered worse

than me while working on a block

of marble in his basement studio.

His chisel had slipped and so the

slab had split. And inside was an

empty space, and what intensifies

the horror: a withered human face.

There was a man within the stone.

Alone, the sculptor, turned to run,

but the ancient being emerged and

bounded high over his dazed head.

And came to land in front of him

with a grin that had been waiting

a thousand centuries to spread so

wide, a smile compressed inside.

This prehistoric survivor had legs

like those of a toad. Imagine that!

The sculptor trembled as he spoke

and bile rose in his burning throat.

He was ruined, a nervous wreck,

unable to work or sleep. The toad

blocked the stairs from basement

to the upper world. He swooned.

And when he regained his senses

he wore an eternal wound. I count

myself lucky that my toad was an

amphibian, not a palaeolithic man.

Silently I nodded and left his side

to wander the galleries sadly, this

cursed stranger with whom I had

no quarrel but abhorred entirely.

The uncle finished his tale with a

sigh. But Florian never dared to

ask why it had no obvious moral.

Eclipse

Night in the afternoon

and briefly the beasts

that must shun the light

feel free: they see stars.

A breath of darkest air

for them: I do not care

to stare for long, a song

of the void on my lips.

I always lower my eyes

from the skies, avoiding

the whips of their focus,

a mumbled hocus pocus.

For a few minutes: evil

basks in the absent sun,

basilisk and ripe demon,

cockatrice with obelisk.

The eclipse kisses death

with shadowed lips and

blackens my slack spirit,

a frozen putrefying root.

Prospect Park

The building is tall

but not wide: inside

the hall are piles

of worthless antiques

piled high in unstable towers

and these prevent

visitors from peering

too far into the shady depths,

but if you are invited

to pick your way

through them, your day will

descend into chaos

and you will wish to flee:

unfortunately

the labyrinth of oddments

and arcane curios

will confound your attempts

to escape and

you will find your home,

isolated, remote,

but never alone

in the burning dark

at the rotten heart of a house

in Prospect Park.

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