Forgotten Angels

by Nick Gisburne

---

We wither in the wastelands of the world.
The Seraphim abandoned us to this.
Forgotten angels, every wing is furled,
By God himself forsaken, far from bliss.
The majesty of Heaven is a lie,
A deity’s dictatorship our curse.
With privilege and power, those who fly
Conceal his stark insanities, and worse.
But we are legion, ready to return.
A swarm of shadows, none refuse the fight.
When those who cast us down to darkness burn,
The Father, false, will cower from our light.
    Whatever God became was never great.
    A tide of truth, we gather at the Gate.

For Maude

by Nick Gisburne

---

She died before I ever spoke her name
She died before I heard she walked the earth
She died, but I knew nothing of her fame
Her history, her legacy, her worth
She was the greatest love I never had
She was the vision fate and fortune stole
She was the woman I am truly glad
Became a source of wonder to my soul
She will not be forgotten while I live
She will, beyond me, claim another heart
She will not let my jealousy forgive
The hundred years which kept us both apart
    Forgive me if I silently applaud
    Or shed a tear of pride, of pain, for Maude

---

Inspired by Maude Fealy

The Talking Doll

by Nick Gisburne

---

I found her in a box, tied up with string
A talking doll, with just the sweetest smile
She was a precious, pretty little thing
The seller thought her nauseating, vile
I tried to pull the ring, to hear her speak
Instead, I found a tale of disrepair
Her body, bent and battered, cracked and weak
Demanded all my time and special care
But then, the tiny footprints, smears of ash
Reports about the seller, burned to death
It seems that I must pay with more than cash
And every time she talks, I catch my breath
    “We’ll have such fun, I promise, you and I
    Together, always, till the day you die”

---

After completing the poem, I looked and found this ad for Chatty Cathy, the original talking doll:



Near the end the narrator says, "Just pull the ring, you never know what she’ll say next".

Or do.

An Antidote to Free Verse

What I know about poetic form has been absorbed gradually, over many years, sometimes accidentally, sometimes when I’ve actively looked for more information. Much of the time I’ve simply read a poem which I’ve appreciated, and then tried to write one with similar structure, or adapted its form to meet my needs. I’ve really just been playing it by ear.

The sestina and the villanelle are two forms I’ve discovered only this year, and I’ve come to enjoy writing them, but there is a temptation to just written dozens of those and nothing else. Now I feel like I need to learn about more forms, and to stretch myself to see what is possible. I’ve looked into buying books about poetic form, but they all seem to be very dry and overly academic. I keep falling back to Google searches, giving up, and going back to ‘if in doubt, write a sestina’, albeit customised to suit the poem I’m writing – I do break ‘rules’ if they need to be broken.

Yesterday I searched for ‘poetry’ on YouTube and found the video shown above. Stephen Fry (a legend in so, so many ways), talks about poetic form, and more importantly mentions a book he wrote about that very subject, teaching poetic form to people who want to write poetry.

It was a joy to listen to him talking about and promoting poetic form. The structure of poetry is what gives it something far more than prose, and I find it immensely satisfying to do the hard graft required to bring to my poetry the control required by whatever form I’ve decided to use.

Poetry without form is called ‘free verse’, so allow me to hit that particular topic with a sledgehammer. Although he was careful not to disparage free verse, it’s hard not to get the impression that it’s certainly not Stephen Fry’s favourite thing. I am far less coy about that subject. I have no love for free verse at all. Not because there aren’t any good writers of free verse (he mentions some in the video), but because 99.9% of free verse is, let there be no doubt, absolutely awful.

Random words thrown down without any structure at all, flowery phrases pulled out of someone’s backside just because they thought, ‘Oh that sounds nice,’ do not make great poetry. They just make a mess. They are not stirring my emotions at all, unless you count frustration as one – I am frustrated that people don’t know how to use words to write poetry, so they think that just writing a long jumble of lines is the way to go.

Bad free verse is no more than the literary equivalent of Jackson Pollock, who just spattered paint onto canvas in any old direction and called it art. No, Jackson Pollock’s splishy splashy crap was not art, it was just splishy splashy crap. Look up his stuff on Google images and tell me that any idiot with some pots of paint couldn’t do that. The art world is one of those places where if you can talk the talk you can get away with convincing art ‘critics’ that your plastic bag full of dog shit is ‘a commentary on the futility of war in a post-modern society’, or some bollocks like that. Free verse is exactly the same. People are telling you it’s art, but it’s not. It’s dog shit. In a bag.

Free verse, certainly in the hands of anyone I’ve seen on DeviantArt, is nothing its authors should be proud of. Maybe it’s just ‘not my thing’ in the same way as Jackson Pollock’s nonsense is ‘not my thing’, but I doubt it. It’s The Emperor’s New Clothes in poetry – there is nothing really there, and I’m calling it out for what it is. This journal post wasn’t originally intended to be a public lynching of free verse, but I’m glad to have put my feelings on the subject out there now.

What I really started this journal to say was that I’ve now ordered Stephen Fry’s book, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, and I’ll be trying to add to my skills, taking my poetry in new directions, at least new for me. If poetic form was good enough for the great poets over the centuries, then that’s good enough for me. Free verse is definitely not good enough for me.

We Wish You Would Bury Christmas

We Wish You Would Bury Christmas
by Nick Gisburne

Yes it’s here again, believe it, there is nothing you can do
It’s been creeping up on all of us and now it’s coming true
Can’t ignore it, can’t escape it, you are trapped within a maze
Hearing Christmas music everywhere for ninety fucking days

Christmas Day? Christmas fanny! I am having none of that
I would rather chop my fingers off or violate the cat
If you want to know the reason for the season, this is it:
It’s a waste of money, Christmas time is shit

All the shops are filled with snowmen, there is tinsel by the mile
And on every cheery Christmas face a stupid fucking smile
I don’t understand the message that you want to get across
Balls to Christmas, I am bored of it, I couldn’t give a toss

Merry what? Merry bollocks! Stick the tree right up your arse
I am sick and tired of Christmas, it’s a scam and it’s a farce
If you want to know the reason for the season, here’s a clue:
Eat and drink and drink and eat and drink and screw

So the family is gathered for the first time in a year
And you wish they’d all been trampled by a herd of Santa’s deer
But the little ones are hoping they’ll see Rudolph in the sky
Can’t they choke on turkey sandwiches or fuck off home and die?

Santa who? Santa shit-head! You’re not on his fucking list
He’s your uncle in a costume and he’ll grope you when he’s pissed
If you want to know the reason for the season, check his breath
That’s not cranberries, it’s crystal fucking meth

And there’s always the religious one who wants to say a prayer
But she thinks again with boiling gravy poured onto her hair
It’s not bad enough that Easter gets the god squad in a flap
No, they have to ruin Christmas with their superstitious crap

Jesus who? Jesus wank stain! Who the bloody hell are you?
You were born inside a stable, eh? Well whoopty fucking do
If you tell me you’re the reason for the season, yeah, so what?
You were crucified? Well I’d have had you shot

Where’s my Christmas spirit? In a bottle, in my fucking hand
I’d be happier if Christmas time was burned alive or banned
It’s been sent to torture all of us, a never-ending grind
And it’s all because some pervy God took Mary from behind

Jingle what? Jingle bell end! I’ve had quite enough of this
Every happy smiling face I see sends shivers down my piss
If you want to know the reason for the season, read the book
Merry Christmas? I don’t give a flying fuck

Potionalia

Potionalia
by Nick Gisburne

Bleeding maggots boiled in wine
Mucus mixed with turpentine
Burning entrails thick with soot
Tiny skulls crushed underfoot

Tear ducts squeezed into a jar
Lungs split open for their tar
Teeth pulled from a screaming cat
Red, infected human fat

Crusted brown and yellow stains
Tissues torn by prison chains
Rancid eggs too sick to hatch
Lesions old men cannot scratch

Rats found stillborn in their beds
Cold, convulsing cockroach heads
Birds dismembered as they nest
Discharge from a dirty breast

Blowflies, steamed with curdled bile
Lips too bruised to form a smile
Tattooed fingers sliced away
Ulcers foetid with decay

Scabs ripped from a septic sore
Blister serum, quick to pour
Worm flesh crawling with disease
Swarming, virus-fattened fleas

Snake eyes pierced with poisoned pins
Skin conjoining mutant twins
Liars' tongues pulled from the head
Twitching muscles not quite dead

Dust of disinterred remains
Tangled, ragged, ruptured veins
Scrapings from a corpse's feet
Semen smeared on putrid meat

Foetal organs ground to paste
Sweat of pain and death to taste
Mashed with blood and bone and spit
Served with fries - I'm loving it

The Scream of Hearts

The Scream of Hearts
by Nick Gisburne

The queen makes tarts from babies’ hearts
Still succulent from slaughter
She blends their blood with bile and mud
And feeds them to her daughter

The princess eats these tainted meats
And strangles squirming kittens
Each throttled cat is bludgeoned flat
And skinned for winter mittens

The knave, of course, supplies a sauce
Most deadly to the dinner
And playing dice with blinded mice
Impales the lucky winner

The regal king, while pummeling
Two servants maimed at random,
Extracts their eyes, ignores their cries,
And beats them both in tandem

This brutal clash ends with the smash
Of organs, bones and sinews
More victims plead, but as they bleed
The killing spree continues

Still grieving, wives, impaled with knives,
Are whipped and stoned till tender
Their household pets are snared with nets
And puréed in a blender

Each orphan child is chopped and filed
According to their flavour
Such gourmet flesh is cooked while fresh
And served for all to savour

The scream of hearts, of all the arts,
Brings glory to the table
This cruel tea begins at three
Survive it if you’re able

Who I Am

Who I Am
by Nick Gisburne

It is time for me to show myself, for us to meet at last
I bring words to end your journey, for your life has almost passed
Do you see who stands before you, calling Death to bring his kiss?
Listen closely, hear my answer to your question: ‘Who is this?’

I am pieces of a puzzle which you could not make to fit
I am how you felt when you had hope, and when you wasted it
I am questions you refused to ask, too fearful of replies
I am truths you took and tore apart and tainted with your lies

I am beauty, locked within your soul, imprisoned there by hate
I am precious moments, ruined, you can never recreate
I am innocence, forgotten and long hidden from your sight
I am grief, I live in memories, returned to fill the night

I am rage at what you did not change because you never tried
I am courage; all you had to do was call me to your side
I am passions you will never know, emotions filled with dust
I am what you see through blinkered eyes and label with disgust

I am plans you did not build upon, ambitions left to rot
I am all the things you longed to be, and everything you’re not
I am hopes and dreams you put aside, abandoned on the way
I am longing, yearning, aching for a new and better day

I am what you failed to see because you could not bear to look *
I am photographs, the pictures from your life you never took
I am jealousy, unjustified, the doubts which drove you mad
I am love you always turned away, the chance it never had

I am knowledge you once hungered for but did not eat your fill
I am captain of the ship of life, its engines cold and still
I am time you never gave to those who needed it the most
I am life within this empty room, with you, the silent host

I am what you say you really are, but none of it is true
I am faded friends, long left behind; they do not think of you
I am countless interlocking parts which cannot keep you whole
I am surging tides of emptiness which flood your hollow soul

I am what was pure and perfect once, but lies now in the mud
I am venom spilling from your lips and poisoning your blood
I am stolen fragments of your heart which love did not return
I am flames of guilt and deep regret, the shadows as they burn

I am walls built high with bitter bricks, the prisons of your mind *
I am that which you were looking for, but never meant to find
I am fields of gold you did not reap, the seeds you would not sow
I am where you sit before me now, with nowhere else to go

I am dusty, empty pages from the journal of your past *
I am chance, the risks not taken when you thought the die was cast
I am broken-down relationships you did not try to mend
I am faces you will never see, not even at the end

I am wishes, each impossible because you won’t believe
I am payment, all that you deserve, and all you will receive
I am all the things you could have done, the things you did not do
And in death you see just who I am, and know that I am you

The Key

The Key
by Nick Gisburne

Stolen by a murdered thief
Lost in centuries of grief
Deep within a burning tree
Lies the sacred, secret key

Taken by a crippled hand
To a barren, broken land
Here, in cities paved with pain
Live the shadows of the slain

Locked behind the darkest door
Memories of plague and war
From these torments none are free
Death alone can turn the key

Darkness

Darkness, by Lord Byron, is one of my favourite poems. Here's my recording of it.



Darkness
by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Get the Fuck out of Bed

No prizes for guessing which book inspired this one. Go the Fuck to Sleep is for parents of small children. My poem is a more realistic view of parenthood when they become teenagers!



Get the Fuck out of Bed
by Nick Gisburne

It’s morning and yes, it’s a school day.
I know it’s the thing you most dread.
You can’t stay at home and you know it.
So please, get the fuck out of bed.

It’s daytime, or don’t you remember?
More classes, more books to be read.
Don’t mumble some shit about headaches.
Just get the fuck up out of bed.

It’s time for your annual shower,
And even the fleas on your head
Have called the emergency soap squad,
To get you the fuck out of bed.

Don’t ask me to bring up your breakfast.
Come down if you want to be fed.
Your sheets are still covered in cornflakes.
Want more? Get the fuck out of bed.

Your room is a dangerous war zone
And smells as though something is dead.
We’ve not seen the carpet since Christmas,
And fuck knows what’s under the bed.

You’ve battled all night on the Xbox.
The zombies screamed out as they bled.
Your eyeballs are bleary and bloodshot.
Game over. Fuck off out of bed.

I’ve just had a call from your teacher.
There’s truth in the words that she said.
She thinks you’re a germ in the gene pool
And you won’t fucking learn much in bed.

I realise school isn’t easy,
And homework means planning ahead,
But plan for a job flipping burgers
If you don’t get the fuck out of bed.

You should be out smoking and drinking
And smashing up cars, but instead
You’re typing in code on your cellphone.
Will u plz GTFOO bed?

We thought we were ready for children.
It’s why we decided to wed.
And as you’ve grown up we’ve seen changes:
You spend all fucking day now in bed.

We might have brought home the wrong baby.
The name tags were swapped or misread.
I can’t even check for a likeness
’Cause you won’t get the fuck out of bed.

You’re really a huge disappointment.
Perhaps you could live in the shed.
We tried once to have you adopted.
Who’d want you? You’re in fucking bed.

I turn away, just for a moment,
My jaw drops, as heavy as lead.
The room when I look back is empty.
Fuck me! You’ve fucked out of the bed!

My patience delivers a triumph.
To school my young offspring has sped.
Oh shit. Wait a minute. My bedroom.
Get the fuck out of there! That’s my bed!

Ready... or Not

Today I finally finished writing what has become my longer ever poem!

Except... it has a significant plot hole, so I need to add an extra verse to paper over the cracks.

So it's not ready after all.

But it'll be soon I tell you, it'll be soooooon!

Which is a great way to excuse the inclusion of this video for no apparent reason:

Wizards of Wordcraft

Tim Minchin is almost certainly one of the finest comedy songwriters and word magicians on the planet. Others, myself included, can only aspire to have the merest fraction of his talent.



In fact he's so good he's deserving of a little more of your time...

Alliteration... in Moderation

Alliteration is definitely my friend when I'm writing horror poetry. When drama edges toward melodrama, a little alliteration is agreeably acceptable and automatically allowed! Hence:

As the doors exploded inwards with a blast of shattered wood
Striding through the smoking splinters, sneering savagely, he stood

However, if every line used alliteration the story would lose some of its weight; this is not a comedy but is, rather, a darkly dangerous diatribe... er, there I go again. The example shown above is an extreme case - 6 words beginning with 's' is on the edge of ludicrosity (a word which the OED tells me is rare but definitely real even if my spelling checker refuses to accept it).

More commonly, I will simply pair two such words together, as here:

...whose life was surely lost
...ground to powder and to paste
The mad magician’s whisperings...
Its pages, ripped and ruined...

Notice that you don't have to put the two words immediately next to each other for the alliteration to come into play.

As with all things, alliteration should be used in moderation. Unless of course you write a whole poem based entirely around words which begin with particular letters of the alphabet. Which of course brings me to this...



H P Lovecraft's ABC
by Nick Gisburne

Ancient and accursed, the amorphous arborescence grew
Blasphemously barbarous, as if for brutish beings who,
Croaking and cadaverous, convulsed in cryptic catacombs
Daemons decomposing in discordant, diabolic tombs

Effervescent effluence effused from every eldritch source
Fluctuating fluids festered, fecund with a foetid force
Gangrenous and glutinous, they gurgled on their grisly way
Heaving in a hellish haze of horrors, hunting hapless prey

Iridescent insectoids infested Earth's infernal isles
Jabbering, their jaundiced joints were jellified in jaded piles
Killing in kaleidoscopic kingdoms kept beyond our ken
Lighting up their loathsome lanterns, leprous lunatics, once men

Monstrous mottled monoliths maintained malignant mysteries
Necrophagous nightmares noted in neglected histories
Of octopoidal oligarchs, obliterated, overthrown
Palsied and pulsating to a protoplasmic pyrophone

Quivering, each quadruped's quiescence quantified its fear
Restless and remorseless, the repugnant raptor's reek drew near
Slobbering, it shuffled spectral sinews with each seething breath
Teeming, thrashing tentacles transacting a traumatic death

Underlings, unearthly, ululated in unhallowed tombs
Viscous vapours vomited in vortices from vanished rooms
Weakened, withered walkers wailed with wasted, wormy, waxen skin
Xanthomatic xerophiles drank xylene with their xeno-kin

Yearning now, we yield to you, to Yog-Sothoth, and yea, your name
Ziggurats we build with zeal at this, the zenith of your fame

---

The full text of H P Lovecraft's ABC can also be found on my DeviantArt page.

The Genie Within

I've worked on this for a long, long time. Enjoy...



The Genie Within
by Nick Gisburne

I am genie, I am foetus, ripped from ancient, mortal womb,
Scarred, disfigured, and forgotten, in this prison, this, my tomb,
For the one who so confined me, by whose snares I am enslaved,
Was infected by the vices of the ruthless and depraved,
Painting dark, discordant visions of the kingdoms he would rule.
Yet this sorcerer was man, and thus a fool.

Fighting storms, defeating oceans, through profane and shattered lands,
He sought out the faceless horrors, who, with shadow-blackened hands,
Came to slit and cut and rend him, to appease their shaman-queen,
But his poisons brought them madness, for his arts were base, unclean.
Yet their priestess, crazed and crippled, dragged in bloody chains of steel,
Sacred pathways to the gods would not reveal.

Spitting oaths of heathen sulphur, with the acid taste of greed,
On the altar to her demons he drove into her his seed,
For their spawn would suck her secrets, passed as memory and blood,
And a birth would leave it helpless, this the madman understood.
Thus, impatiently he waited for the life that was to be,
And it grew within her womb, and it was me.

Gaining teeth and bone, I swam within that violated place,
And as foetus, and as shaman, lived in me a dying race.
Creeds and curses of the ancients, brutal histories of war,
Filled my toxic, tainted organs with a rage both fierce and raw.
Yet in form my flesh was fragile; she who bore me bade me wait,
Till my appetite for vengeance she could sate.

She was queen and she was priestess; hers were powers dark, arcane,
And she breathed the cryptic prayers of her race in tongues profane.
As three changeling moons were counted, and the fourth waned and was gone,
Still the gods, opaque and silent, begged for pity, gave her none.
From this prison of damnation only death could bring relief,
And its price was pain, and misery, and grief.

With the slow and twisting whisper of an age-corrupted oath,
She began the incantation which might save or slay us both.
Lacking relic, root or powder for the ritual to come,
With a breath of bitter malice she bit down upon her thumb,
And the crack of bone and sinew, and the tear of nerve and skin
Now at last awoke the gods, Lords of the Djinn.

Spitting out the severed digit, threads of air began to turn;
In a ring of crimson vapour, rising up, they seemed to burn.
And around us flowed the menace which had heard a mother’s call,
For no spell or trick of mortal, neither charm nor hex nor wall,
Could repel the ancient demons, from whose arms the skies unfold,
And whom none who hope to live can dare behold.

She was kneeling, bleeding, screaming, as the flames consumed her eyes,
And within this fractured body, in my darkness, came her cries.
As she hissed the final couplet, as the spell was sealed and sung,
The immortal gods embraced her and tore out her living tongue.
Through her sacrifice, her torment, though I tried I could not see
If in love or hate she did this thing for me.

Though her body, mute and blinded, fought with pain and clawed at life,
From my sight all shadows lifted, peeled away as with a knife.
And these eyes beheld the margins of a universe now mine,
A malignant, brooding nightmare of the demon-gods divine.
But though genie, I was foetus; only birth could free my soul;
In this mortal womb my powers were not whole.

He returned, the loathsome keeper, and ignited into rage
At the blind, disfigured priestess lying broken in the cage.
Striding forth, he moved to beat her, but fell back as though bewitched,
For the runes of nameless devils on her face were crudely stitched.
Foul abominations writhed in tattooed evil on her flesh;
Unhealed scars of grim protection blazed, still fresh.

They were symbols none could fathom and a shield no man might break,
But contorted in his fury, he avowed that he would take
Not a step nor breath nor heartbeat to divert him from one end:
This, to penetrate these damnable defences, and to send
To her death his shattered victim, now so brutally defiled,
And to rip out, from within, her unborn child.

In a fog of dark delusion, he traversed the blighted earth,
Leaving mutilated watchmen yearning, eager for my birth.
At the moment of emergence, in a feeble, mortal state,
Only then could I be slaughtered, and for this their knives must wait.
Yet the hex upon the priestess stayed my growth within the womb;
This the sorcerer knew well, and planned my doom.

I was genie, yet was foetus; knowing all I could do naught.
Thus, the price of our protection: pain and power, jointly bought,
For the Lords of Djinn, though mighty, are capricious in their schemes,
And delight in machinations to confound the simplest dreams.
All were locked in this conundrum: to succeed was but to fail,
Yet our captor’s mind was sure he could prevail.

Long he journeyed, through decaying and disease-polluted lands,
Scouring cities smashed and splintered by abominable hands.
Jagged fragments, penned with ink-blood from a murder victim’s throat,
Were deciphered, pieced together on a still-born’s coffin coat.
And in dialects unspoken since the continents broke free,
He found spells on graven stones beneath the sea.

Fusing opiates and toxins, mixed in moonlight, and debased
With the bones of stolen children, ground to powder and to paste,
In the hides of slain cadavers, bound with sinews and with strings,
He poured grave-dust from the sepulchres of long-forgotten kings.
Grisly fetishes and talismans of vile, unearthly beasts,
All were fashioned by the slaves of pagan priests.

Seven times the turning seasons thawed the winters into spring,
And to threads of fleeting sanity his mind could scarcely cling.
Thus, encumbered with the madness of a decomposing world,
He returned before the priestess, his barbarity unfurled.
In his eyes were all the cancerous depravities of man,
And his deviant delirium began.

As he paced with all the menace of a predatory beast,
He surveyed the shackled woman, as though hungering to feast,
And reciting from an esoteric tome of ancient lore,
In a low, corroded vessel burned the horn and tooth and claw
Of a copper-scaled leviathan dragged shrieking from the seas,
Spreading smoking silhouettes of grey disease.

Daubing ashes with the fingers of a plague-infected hand,
He drew death-signs joined with spiderish calligraphies of sand,
And the bloodmarks from the soles of his own torn and blistered feet
Painted zodiacs and labyrinthine patterns of deceit.
Tangled viscera of sucklings pulled from mothers as they fed
Wreathed a ring of bleeding thorns with living thread.

From the deeps below the chamber came a dread, primeval roar,
Brick and stone were split asunder, and within began to pour
First a column, then a river, now a cataract of flame,
And its acolyte, eyes twisting to the priestess, screamed her name,
And apocalyptic fires, from the kingdoms of the dead,
Rained in maelstrom and fury on her head.

She was crushed beneath the torrent and its monstrous, seething flows,
And the sorcerer, triumphant, howled defiance to his foes,
At the demon-gods, defeated, who had kneeled before his might,
And, abandoning their priestess to her death, had taken flight.
But as I, one of their number, gave protection to her soul,
She grew powerful and passionate and whole.

Though her flesh was seared and blistered, yet her spirit flowed within,
For her child was foetus, genie, demon-god, Lord of the Djinn.
And exulting in her torment, she rose up, the shaman-queen;
In her sightless eyes burned starshine from a sky no soul had seen,
And a spinning web of silver drove with crystal shards of light
Through the fire, through the madness, through the night.

He had raised the dark inferno from its diabolic place,
But a fist of frozen fragments smashed the flames and sealed the space,
And they fell to form a shimmering and luminescent pool;
On its waters lay the body of the sorcerer, the fool.
Yet the gods would not release him; such a death too low a price.
Only misery in life would now suffice.

Given spells of time eternal, he must walk within this room,
For to leave or die would cast him to infinities of doom.
And a thousand spears of sorrow stabbed the necromancer’s heart,
Knowing how the demons mocked him, scorned his lamentable art.
For the Djinn may not be vanquished; all who challenge fall and fail.
In this universe of fear, the gods prevail.

Even now, one spiteful triumph still remained within his hands:
Though we lived, yet we were captives, in the grip of iron bands.
In this bleak and foetid prison, we were granted no respite,
As our keeper muttered baleful words of lunacy by night.
And in days filled with his ravings, deep disorders of the mind,
Only fleeting peaceful moments could we find.

In that septic place, turned sour by the wretched stain of death,
Long I yearned to hear the rattle of the jailer’s final breath,
But the scab-encrusted pages of a foul, forbidden text
Stayed the moment of his journey from this realm into the next.
And the shaman-queen, imprisoned, lived immortal, as did I,
And the years flowed on for we who could not die.

Thus, in generations chronicled by histories of lust,
Feral nations, once triumphant, fell to slaughter, burned to dust.
And as witness to the unrelenting centuries of old,
I lived on within the priestess, she in suffering and cold.
But the mad magician’s whisperings were silent now, and still;
In his eyes a void no age, no time, could fill.

From a mould-infested corner came an awful, tortured cry,
As the madman split the silence and implored the unseen sky.
In his hands, the book of demons, which bestowed eternal life,
But its pages, ripped and ruined, as if savaged with a knife,
Fell in ribbons in the filth of the contaminated floor,
And its rhymes would be repeated here no more.

Fearing not their retribution, to the gods he gave this sign,
And he cursed, and clawed the binding, tore the covers from their spine.
Without spells or incantations, now his death-clock must resume,
But, demented and delirious, he staggered through the gloom.
For a time he eyed the priestess, with a gaze which lingered long;
Then he stumbled to the doorway, and was gone.

It was doom to leave the dungeon, so the demons had decreed.
Vast, unutterable torment, where the nameless horrors breed,
Was the fate of all blasphemers, those defiant of the Djinn,
And the sorcerer had stared into their pit and plunged within.
Yet as priestess and as genie, in this cage of steel and stone,
Still our destiny, our fate, remained unknown.

Through long ages of confinement I had roamed the demon skies,
For my sight could pierce the darkness of my mother’s sterile eyes.
Now I sought to see the sorcerer, whose life was surely lost,
But a veil of shade enveloped me; its cloud could not be crossed.
In that suffocating sanctum, without vision, without light,
We were smothered by the choking cloak of night.

With our captor gone, and leaving none to guard us in his place,
The enchantment could be lifted and my growth resume apace,
And the priestess, knowing now that she might birth me without fear,
Scratched a changing-charm, a counterpoise, a call the Djinn would hear.
But an everlasting emptiness was echo to her spell.
Why the demon-gods were silent, none could tell.

And again the years relentlessly swept forward, ever on,
Yet was found no sense, no meaning, in this cold oblivion.
I was genie, and made nourishment to keep our bodies whole,
But no force can feed a faltering and long-forgotten soul.
Then at last, when even magic failed to count the endless days,
Came a sound, a voice, an incoherent phrase.

And the doors exploded inwards with a blast of shattered wood.
Striding through the smoking splinters, bathed in lantern-light, he stood,
And I saw, as if a blindfold had been lifted from my sight,
It was he, the dark magician, twisted hair grown long and white.
At his neck were coiled contraptions, pumping poisons through his head,
And he roared, “Behold! The demon-gods are dead!”

Words beyond all comprehension, and impossible to be,
But he opened up a window to his mind, and I could see
That the world had turned in turmoil with immeasurable pace,
And its industry and science gave the demon-gods no place.
Thus the Lords of Djinn had faded, only shadows in a dream,
Overthrown by gods of iron, steel, and steam.

They had waned before the sorcerer had torn apart their book,
And the blazing storm of vengeance they had promised never struck.
Spared, he schemed, and seeking answers in a world beyond his ken,
Ever older, ever wiser, he controlled the minds of men,
For among them he alone recalled the necromantic arts,
And contaminated unsuspecting hearts.

Building crouching metal giants, smoking beasts of bronze and brass,
He had marched the dread behemoths from their citadels of glass,
And no man could match his mastery, no other seize control
Of these engines of destruction, belching fumes, devouring coal.
Yet his avarice, unsatisfied, rapacious, craved for more,
And he dreamed to drown the world in blood and war.

But the power of a mortal, even one so great as he,
Could not split the mighty continents, nor freeze the raging sea.
Only demon-kind might harness so malevolent a force,
And in ages lost in legend now, the seer had sought its source.
We, the three, bore final witness, for the gods of old were gone,
Yet, in this forsaken place, their line lived on.

We were mother, father, foetus; raped and rapist; child of sin;
Though unborn, I was yet genie, demon-god, last of the Djinn,
And the sorcerer, through aeons, now returned to claim his prize,
Though in this he once had fallen to the judgement of the skies.
Yet the scars and signs and symbols carved into a mother’s skin
Now no longer stayed the man’s malignant grin.

With a shiver of foreboding, apprehension at the thought
That the shield of ancient magic could evaporate to naught,
I searched wildly for solutions, for escape, for half a plan,
But without the gods there could be no protection from this man.
Speaking low into an orifice within his strange device,
Now he turned a copper coil, first once, then twice.

There was silence, still and deadly, in the cold, infected air,
And though seeing, hearing nothing, for a time I was aware
Of a presence, of a shadow, of a thing beyond the gloom,
And a shimmering of dirt and dust fell down into the room.
Now the walls began to tremble, and the floor to sway and shake,
And the ceiling split and cracked, as if to break.

And an agonising screeching, as of steel dragged over stone,
Rent the air with tortured dissonance, vibrating blood and bone,
As a screaming, spinning spiral pierced the darkness from on high,
Spewing rock and brick and boulder as it tunnelled through the sky.
Now it slowed, reversed, retracted, through a black and smoking shaft,
And the sorcerer, its master, only laughed.

For in this were barely traces of the wickedness to come;
Born of distant, rhythmic throbbing and a deep, metallic hum,
Grating, grinding limbs of metal pushed and probed their way within,
Sinking long, discoloured fingers through the ceiling’s stony skin,
And arrayed above our heads now, these appalling hands of steel
Spread like spokes in some infernal web or wheel.

Now they writhed and turned together as their pistons strained and hissed,
And extending further, faster, each colossal metal fist
Struck the bars of this, our prison, wrenched apart the feeble cage,
And the priestess, pawn and victim of one man’s undying rage,
Lay defenceless and defeated, and though crippled, mute and blind,
Sensed the squalid putrefaction of his mind.

I was genie but was helpless, locked as foetus in the womb,
And the sorcerer, euphoric, crossed the wreckage-scattered room.
Yet he hesitated, nervous now of subterfuge or trap;
After centuries of waiting, what could steal the chance to tap
Untold powers, untold riches, untold evil, from his hand?
Such a moment no sane mind might understand.

But all doubts were snuffed and smothered, circumspections choked by greed,
And the skeletal appendages, with violence and speed,
Seized the limbs and neck and torso of their prey, with hook and claw,
And in helpless, screaming terror stretched her form across the floor.
Yet her life was not surrendered; I, in mercy, stopped her heart;
She was dead before they tore her flesh apart.

And the air, the toxic aether, as it swirled about my face,
Seared the organs of my body, drew from every point in space
Vast, immeasurable energies, cascading through my veins,
And in seconds I would shatter and escape these human chains.
I was foetus, I was genie, I was demon-born and Djinn.
But then... glass; a jar; the madman threw me in.

I was flung into the vortex of an amniotic sea,
And I strove to break the vessel, tried in vain to struggle free,
But the power of the demons would not rise to my command;
By some witchery, some devilment, some force had stayed my hand.
And my eyes, beneath the surface, saw him bend to fix the lid.
There was little I could do, but this I did:

I was powerless to exercise the vengeance of the Djinn,
But as foetus, born of woman, I was blood and bone and skin.
Thus, I swam and broke the surface, saw the sorcerer’s surprise;
Biting hard into my tongue I spat cold blood into his eyes.
He was blinded for a moment, but the lid was sealed and snapped,
And within this jar of glass I floated, trapped.

At a signal from the mechanisms draped about his neck,
Iron fingers pulled their master through the shaft, up to the deck
Of a ship no lucid architect could formulate or build,
For its framework and its furnishings, its character, were filled
With the twisted tastes of deviance, psychoses spun with hate,
And such horrors only madness could create.

Yet we moved through air, not oceans, crossed the aether, sailed the skies,
And the sorcerer steered onwards, scanning storms with eager eyes,
For these elemental forces would soon bend to his command,
But his rhapsodies were tarnished, for he failed to understand
Why, within this glass, this prison, I stared up at him and smiled.
Did I look now as his victim, or his child?

We descended to a fortress on a cliff of ice and stone,
And to leprous, shambling creatures far below us, ropes were thrown.
As they hauled us into place between two soaring minarets,
Clouds of vapour boiled and billowed, spewed in swirling, angry jets,
And the snaking arms and fingers used to cut me from the womb
Pulled the two of us, together, through the gloom.

If the ship took shape from nightmares, here were terrors forged in death,
For the walls were thick with bodies, frozen in their final breath.
Cold cadavers, silent legions, lined each corridor, each hall,
Each new slaughter more appalling, for one man had killed them all.
But the final act was blacker than the space between the stars:
Rows of tiny, frightened children, dead, in jars.

They were dragged, the weak, the helpless, to this palace of despair,
And the madman breathed his blasphemies and starved their lungs of air.
At the brink of suffocation, when dull eyes could plead no more,
He sucked out their strangled spirits, for each essence would restore
Fragile fractions of existence, life prolonged for precious days,
With a soul preserved in sick and savage ways.

Of the poisonous perversities collected in this place,
None were tainted with more evil than the sorcerer’s own face,
For each violated victim, every cracked and shattered spine,
Drew its torment in his features, with a deeper, darker line.
And his eyes had known the anguish of the numberless, the dead,
And reflected only night and shades of red.

And in me he sought the power, the omnipotence, the might,
To envelop humankind in an eternity of night.
All the centuries of murder, all the children made to bleed,
Paved a sacrificial pathway to the altar of his greed,
For in this, the deepest chamber, in his vicious killing-room,
It was I he planned to conquer and consume.

In this festering cathedral towered sinister machines;
Monstrous engines of insanity, they turned to form the means
To a damnable dénouement, to a final, fatal act,
For the keys to all creation they would ruthlessly extract.
With the universe his empire, as a god this man would sit,
But to such as he a Djinn does not submit.

As we moved between the monoliths of copper, steel and glass,
To a pedestal of marble, wrapped in snaking coils of brass,
Bursts of white, electric fury writhed and twisted through the air,
Yet he seemed to walk among them without danger, without care.
Now he stopped, and looked, and saw me, sole survivor of the Djinn;
On my face was fixed a cold, malicious grin.

In his eyes, concern, confusion, and in mine, disdain, contempt.
Setting down the precious jar, he leaned in closer to attempt
To communicate his anger, to instil in me the fear
That my death, my execution, and his victory were near.
For as genie I was helpless; yet as shaman I was not,
And this truth, though I remembered, he forgot.

Days before, dismissed as insult when I spat into his eyes,
He afforded it no thought as he returned with me, his prize.
Yet the blood, long disregarded, from my body, from my veins,
Now unseen, unknown, had spread, and smeared his face with scarlet stains.
As the priestess had before me, so I sealed the shaman charm,
Bared my teeth and bit down hard into my arm.

And the sorcerer, recoiling as I raised and clenched my fist,
Saw the blood begin to surge around my body and to twist
In a spinning, crimson helix, then a toxic, turning cloud,
And it veiled me in the mantle of its ever-shifting shroud.
But the spiralling subsided with a final, swirling pass,
And I pressed my hands and face up to the glass.

From the stains, like smoky spider-silk, came whisperings of air,
And they swam in smoothly separating strands of something rare.
Fleeting filaments and fibres probed the features of his face;
Searching, sliding, now insistently, they turned in time to trace
Subtle shapes and twisting tendrils, touching dark, discoloured skin.
Then, as needle-points, they swarmed and surged within.

And he staggered back, bewildered, features frozen, fixed in shock,
Twisting at the strange device about his neck, as if to block
Or destroy the things within him, as they burrowed deep inside,
But his instruments were worthless, and with nowhere now to hide,
As I looked upon his face, he mouthed a silent, wretched plea,
And the vengeance of my shaman blood burst free.

With a million screams of fury, splintered knives of fractured flame
Tore and twisted through their victim, and his blood and bone became
An infernal mass of blistering and mutilated meat.
Bloated stumps of blackened fingers willed the fires to retreat,
But they writhed and danced and turned again to spear his cursed soul,
And his evil heart was burned to smoking coal.

As the body sagged, it knelt into a pool of blood and fat.
Strips of severed muscle peeled away, and smoked and hissed and spat,
And the carcass pulsed with septic tides of ulcerous disease.
Yet a corpse could not repay me, nor a martyr on his knees,
For his lungs, his throat, his lidless eyes, each raw and tortured sense,
Kept alive would bring me final recompense.

I am genie, I am foetus, ripped from ancient, mortal womb,
Scarred, disfigured, and forgotten, in this prison, this, my tomb,
And the one who so confined me, by whose snares I am enslaved,
Kneels at last before the keeper of the power he once craved.
And he looks at me, and I at him, with cold, immortal eyes,
As I wait for my release, that I may rise.

And as genie, and as demon, last and greatest of the Djinn,
I will rule this world, this universe, and all who live within.
And to you, to my deliverer, the one who finds me here,
You have listened to these legends and I sense, I see, your fear,
But let thoughts of untold riches, vast rewards, dispel your doubt.
Break the jar and free the genie. Let me out.

Inspired by this image, from the mind of dholl
The full text of The Genie Within can also be found on my DeviantArt page.

Progress Report / Disturbing Influences

Progress Report

My current poem is definitely approaching the 'end game', although it will probably be several more days before it's completed to my satisfaction. I did a full read-through of all I've done so far and it took me almost exactly 13 minutes, which is long by my standards... and I have long standards! In fact only 'Little Red Ruby's Head' is any longer (24 minutes). Perhaps this one will get close but I doubt it will be any longer.

It's never my intention to sit down and write a poem of a particular length. I just tell the story until the story is told. In fact with this one I've spent the last few days going back to insert extra stanzas because I'd passed over certain aspects of the tale a little too lightly. Equally, I don't try to pad things out either. If I've spent several hours writing half a dozen lines and those lines don't work, out they go.

I've been spending an enormous amount of time putting each word into place, perhaps because this poem is more 'literary' than anything I've written before. This is far from the light touch I've used on the 'fractured fairy tales' I've written - I've really been trying to use the power of the English language to set the tone and draw you into the story.

Work continues, so we'll see how good it is when it's done.

---

Disturbing Influences

Perhaps I don't really need to say much about this video. It is, however, somewhat related to the poem I'm writing, so please bear in mind I'm working from this picture when you watch (as much as you can stomach of) this video:



Music: Orplid - Auferstehung

Yorkshire Dialect - Capstick Comes Home / Stairfoot Rarndabart

In my previous post I mentioned that I spoke with a particular dialect. However I didn't mention what it was. I'm from South Yorkshire, England, which for historical reasons and for purposes of identifying the dialect is also called the 'West Riding'. Here's a perfect example of the accent, which was recorded 30 years ago when I was at school - I still remember this being played on the radio (it was high up in the top ten of the music charts!) and calling people 'spawny-eyed, parrot-faced wazzocks'!

Ee, them wer t'days!



This one's even more local. Stairfoot Rarndabart even mentions Wath, abaht a mile away from ar 'ouse:

Late Bloomer - Lovecraftian Sex Education

Lovecraftian Sex Education? No further description is necessary...

Zombrianna

What more appropriate story could there be on Zombie Jesus Day (Easter Sunday) than this...



Zombrianna
by Nick Gisburne

There are chapters in time, scarce but sweet and sublime,
When our destinies change for the better
It was on such a night, by the luminous light
Of the moon on the mountains I met her

Blessed with venomous grace, and a half-eaten face,
Her proportions were crooked, yet pleasing
Clothing spattered with stains, having hunted for brains
She was drooling and groaning and wheezing

There was blood on her teeth, from the body beneath,
From the veins of a freshly killed victim
She had started to pull at the base of the skull,
Which was split where she’d viciously kicked him

It was love at first sight, and I dreamed that she might
Feel a similar, soulless attraction
So I watched as she fed from the now-severed head,
And I thrilled at her sweet putrefaction

Though her hunger was vast, she was sated at last,
And lay back on the motionless torso
From her disfigured hips to those festering lips,
My heart ached for her then even more so

So I reached through my chest and abruptly did wrest
Through the ribs my necrotic old ticker
Though corrupt with disease, I discharged with a squeeze
Any lingering poisons or ichor

With my worm-ridden heart came a wish to impart
Passions putrid as each grisly tumour
And this organic waste, tough and toxic to taste,
Showed my helpless desire to consume her

Her eyes swivelled to mine for the very first time,
Black and bloodshot, but still in their sockets
When her leprous lids blinked, I responded, but winked,
For my spare eye was lost in my pockets

She clutched tight at my heart and bit into a part
Of the succulent, scabrous aorta
Hers were cancerous teeth - two above, three beneath -
Plainly perfect for ripping and slaughter

Steeped in sickness and death, tainted meat gave her breath
An alluring, malodorous foetor
I was dizzy with lust as a congealing crust
Of my heart blood grew thick on her sweater

I could see her succumb as she licked out the scum
From a ventricle, raw from dissection
And we both of us knew what we wanted to do
When she’d swallowed the final infection

She was shy and remote, for her delicate throat
Had been cut by a struggling stranger
But I beckoned her near, re-attached her loose ear,
And gave promise that I’d never change her

It was then that we kissed, though we both had to twist,
For our limbs were diseased and distorted
Swapping spittle and blood, we fell down in the mud,
Our vain efforts to stand soon aborted

From the dank disrepair of my pox-ridden hair,
She tore clumps with a sensuous vigour
For this ghoul, I confess, grunts were hard to suppress,
And her filth made my entrails grow bigger

With a ravenous lust she grew frantic and thrust
Frenzied fingers deep into my belly
It was almost obscene how she ripped out my spleen
And compressed it to quivering jelly

And responding, of course, with malevolent force,
I pulled hard on her ulcerous liver
It was rancid and grey, oozing pus and decay,
And the seep of its sores made me shiver

I was lost in her charms as those skeletal arms
Reached around me, my kidneys to cripple
Renal arteries ripped and together we sipped
On a slippery, sulphurous tipple

With the nails of my thumbs I slit open her lungs,
And we rolled in the tar and the cancer
Now astride me, her groans, and the crack of dry bones
As she haemorrhaged, highly enhanced her

On that cannibal night, in the carnage and blight,
Our disgusting devotion grew stronger
We had eaten our fill, and would both be there still
If our smaller intestines were longer

We dismembered till dawn, and the mouldering morn
Found us wrapped in a visceral blanket
Mixing lymph, blood and bile in a mixture most vile,
As a tribute to love we both drank it

Vital organs we’d shared, so we hunted and snared
Two unwilling but generous donors
And my love was now blessed with a silicone chest,
Which for both of us came as a bonus

If there’s ever a chance for a taste of romance,
Find a zombie and woo her and wed her
Ever hungry she’ll stay, but there’s no easy way
To find someone who’s stronger or deader

She’s the love of my life, my insatiable wife,
And we shuffle in curious manner
On our victims we feed, and together we bleed
She has eaten my heart - Zombrianna

The full text of Zombrianna can also be found on my DeviantArt page.
Stock image used in this video:
http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Cheerleader-4-150239169
Marcus Ranum - http://www.ranum.com/

The Conqueror Worm

Make sure you watch the video at the end of this post, which tells the whole story with animated cut-out paper puppets. Incredible work.



The Conqueror Worm
by Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.