Till Death do us part...?

To Ogdred Weary

With this ring, I do thee wed
O, how I shall rejoice when thou art dead
Why I may even caper, gambol, or dance
Now, how do like your tea,
with arsenic, two lumps, and cream?
Why not go out for a stroll, go on go,
I’ll meet you presently beneath the wheels of my auto

With my body, I do thee worship,
If not a stumble, why not a slip
Down, down the winding stairs,
Why I haven’t care if you are interred alive
In a mausoleum, sepulcher, or crypt besides?

While it be not my intention to engender suspicion,
Might I at least explain my odd manner and diction?

I may account for that dagger in my armoire drawer on Tuesday last,
As for the pistol in the marmalade, there has been a rash
of rabid, wily shrews
infesting the surrounding glade and mews

A noose?
Preposterous, it is a bell pull plain to see,
Now won’t you slip your head in and give it a ring?

That West Indies adder on the pantry floor,
was an escaped zoological specimen from Kuala Lumpur.

And with all my worldly goods I thee endow,
Yet to flee under the cover of night, my beloved bride to be, this I shan’t allow!

My darling, sweetest, dearest treasure true
Must we begin our courtship anew?

What of the chocolates, flowers, walks and choice wines?
Or am I to infer as you run, raving down the lane,
That you most respectfully decline

Damnatio memoriae

Tide of Reaping

None were in wont,
As all manner of viand did the earth offer forth,
In matchless plentitude.

Pestilence nor sword wert no master,
wizened they became,
by the years swift passage.

So alike the gods were they,
Twas in repose alone,
they became,
Spirit guardians for their brethren

Under Saturn’s hand, prosperity flourished all told,
These were the times, in the times of Gold

Tide of Sowing

Centurion child,
Toil wilt thou taste.

Against thy brother, against the wilds,
for your fare, ye shall now contest.

Jupiter decrees
Death shall be your lot,
For the worship ye denied.

By the north sun that scorches,
By the tempest, thy flesh wilt quiver
These were the times, in times of Silver


Tide of Destroying

Bore of ashen sprig,
No bread they took,
In bronze all was rendered thus

To the very hearts housed in their chests,
Hades became their abode when they did fall,
Hades of the lash and of the bonds,
These were the times, in times of Bronze

Glory was won, when armies took the field
Mingling the blood of the brave,
With the tear of maid and babe hadst her sorrow too
War was made to live in peace, it mattered not the banner,

They were to march under- impassioned or stoic,
These were the times, in times Heroic.

Hardened men were these,
To the sufferings of the common lot.
The coin was the quarry,
Their gain, and sole end
The few wert preserved, ‘pon the lives of the dying,
These were the times, in times of Iron.

Tide of sowing,
Tide of reaping,
Tide of destroying,
and that for the plan.

What times draw near,

in this our hour given-

art we to sleep or wilt we waken?

Tide of Planning

Dispossessed of the golden times,
we can not hope to regain,
No more than we may vivify those scores aforementioned,
once slain

Hence, look not to the stars, prophecy, or other portents.
Destinies are wrought by the acts of thee and thine
As much as by the hand of time,

As it was for our forebears of yon,
So shall it be for our heirs to come.

Obscurum per Obscurius

For many a month hadst I been exhuming fresh cadavers at the good doctor’s behest
For what he so queerly termed, his empirical “tests”

Though in all my employ as his resurrectionist never did it occur,
That I collected such a specimen, so very singular.

In spite of being less than a fortnight immured,
This corse was black as sable,
And withered so,
as if ‘twere a thousand, thousand years interred

Possessing none of those tell tale charnel aromas,
Suffusing the room with rather,
Faint notes of mercury, salt, and sulphur
Without delay I dispatched the paige across the moors,
To fetch the doctor here posthaste, he willingly suffered.

Would that I not dismissed my sole company,
For upon my return to that room wherein the body lied,
Such a turn did I have by what I next espied

That very same corse which was only a moment prior,
as I mentioned,
So strangely blackened,
Wert now stark white- eerily iridescent.

Nearer yet I brought the taper,
To ensure confounded senses hath not erred
Lo, white it was,
upon my soul, as alabaster fair

A jot of bitters would steady my nerves, I so reasoned
Quitting the room for but an instant nary
To mine mantle for mine flask I withdrew,
without tarry
Whereupon the hovels center I gained,
Astonied I was to behold
That body, that body hadst yet again changed
Now nearly sanguine in hue
Though all this time that corse lay stone still-
It didst not move.




Now, it is just such rural environs
Where customs do say
That the murderer appearance causeth
blood to ooze forth from the bones of the slain,
If there be sooth to these tellings,
Which I give no credence
It would scarcely account,
for the whole form incarnadined thus,
As it be witnessed.

Nay there are other agencies at work!
Agencies that would consign me by designs to the furthest reaches of insanity
Lo, what was once a balmy breeze of curiosity, piquing fancies I canst only intimate
art now a maelstrom of the malignity,
Blasting me off the precipice to a most ruinous fate!

My dagger flew to the ready,
to meet mine destiny by blade point!
I vacillating verily-
betwixt composed disbelief and a feral mien
took leave of my senses, and over to reverie gave in.
Imagine, a cultivated man of the age,
Stricken with moral vagaries as those of that cloistered ilk.
Dagger in hand, all in a rage

Yet, as I circled round that hovel with its weird tenant,
An otherworldly sensation pricked my flesh as it had at no other occasion.

From which nether regions, foul airs, or chthonian pit was this corse expelled?
By whom, by what
Be it endowed?
To what end doth it haunt the earth anew, avenger, upon some venial misdeed begotten, long ago committed,
though not forgotten

I threw my hands heavenward imploring exoneration by the celestial machinery
For these mortal remains,
To forebear, O, forebear its ill-starred charge to claim
Ere I couldst give utterance to this, a hand like adamantine
seized my arm
Arresting the feeble paroxysm of protest on my lips

Held fast in that death pale hand all became
golden beyond golden
as my life force withered and waned
Beyond golden
Beyond golden
Beyond golden brightly burnished
I am no more, no more
A psychopomp to the purpose




What felicity I were home when the paige paid call,
The door ajar I entered withal
A gnarled corpse sprawled on the floor I beheld in a ghastly blackened state,
I can only assume, this be the one my grave robber made mention,
And the paige didst relate.

What eludes my reason still to this very day,
Is why the body was so neatly arrayed, baring one finger of the left hand,
Pointing in the moor ward direction,
In the semblance of a final injunction.

Twas to the moors avaunt, I first gazed on that preternatural glow,
As I recount
A radiant golden light bore on the ether overspreading the moors recesses
Keeping vigil aside the night and darkness

When gazing upon this strange sight
these words did into my brain alight
Nay not like a thought
Were these words wrought.
They were psychically summoned
From some primeval fount
I doth redoubt
For weeks afterward I was told, I could do naught but repeat
Interspersed amongst feverish rantings and wails
Nature unaided shall fail, nature unaided shall fail

Not by the Five Wits

Not by taste where they delivered.
The acrid fear that rose in thy gullet,
Didst lack,
just enough,
to dismiss—
and enter the forest depths,
Where I lied in wait,
To make the first cut.

Not by sight where thou delivered.
The path you nearly gained to hail the passing merchant,
when gave I chase to,
Drag you writhing back,
into the forest.

Not by touch will thou be delivered.
Thy feeble grappling, spirited though it was,
could not break my hold,
nor vouchsafe thee a coveted moments more.

Not by hearing will thou be delivered.
Pleas bore on thy final breath,
will carry just short of the lit dwellings beyond.

What remains of you the forest shall take,
savaged body,
rent garment,
hank of hair,
Any of which wouldst suffice,
for mob or constable to assemble,
were they not claimed by the winter frost.

Thaw it will in due course,
Laying open so ghastly a scene,
That all will pray, weep, and march forth
Thought not afore mine next victim happen by,
delivered.

Requiescat In Pace


Pierce bone, pierce flesh, and forget not the skin
Lay bare the lair of the
The Daemon within.

Housed in the hollows twixt mine heart and ghost
Delectable fare for a Daemon dire, loves bastard kin,
I am the host. I am the host.

When starved, rather than wither wraith-like and gaunt
A morsel she always finds,
Sufficient.
Upon which to glut

Requiescat

Passages, proverbs art in vain forsworn.
My paramour, again I have fallen,
And now I must mourn

Mark the days it slumbers beneath
Curse those that it violates and feeds

Requiescat In,
Requiescat In,
Am I to be forever stricken?

Indeed, it wilt be so.
for though every pit, every turn, all summits, and chambers of that hollow
Me thought I wert ‘ware
There remains another unbeknownst within that daemon lair
Intertwined, nay not athwart
An angel chaste too resides with
that infernal consort

Sacred and profane may in one breast be,
Henceforth, Requiescat In Pace for all eternity

Memento Mori

I

There are wolves in the wind this eve
A fierce wind that howls
Tormenting the horses and bending the boughs, lashing the manor with such might and main with bearing to rend the very earth right through, in twain
From whence came this tempest, monstorous havoc-bringer?
Look to it, atop mine chest of black poplar timber.
Though at present I be embowered privily aloft in the tower and know this not,

Mark me well, O ye of this earthen lot,
aye, it is able of this and worse as thou wilt witness,
afore this tale be told of dire doings,
phantastic and ruinous.
And so there it stood on mine chest,
or so I wilt guess,
As the penumbra of my chamber was pitch as the pit,
Permitting no vision, not a hands breadth, not a cubit.

No matter, yet
Even without light’s ingress,
or egress.
this much I must confess,
it’s innocence was soon belied by a seething force I could descry,
as the nightish ether that compassed round it did feed upon,
by my soul,
a mounting nocturne whose power roiled and hissed,
hunger for the spark, from the flint, in my fist.

It was…. a candle, a candle it was.
Though not of the ordinary sort, nay,
it plainly was not.
This candle,
once illumined doth fortell by what manner and what moment,
one who lit the gnarled wick wouldst enjoin the dead and depart the quick, or so legend doth purport.

I am a noble lady of the court, no seer with the sight,
however from the first,
this candle’s queer origins ‘twere enough to stir affright

Condemned in grimoire’s most malefic volumes, unlettered though I was in their glyphs and sorcery,
I wit enough to gather, this item were shunned by even the most perverse seeker of esoterica like a pestilence and no mere token of chance and folly.
Further lore would tell of an accursed criminal hung from the gallows and later quartered,
whose hand, worker of woe that it was,
had been rendered,
each finger to tallow.
Of the other four their whereabouts are no wise known, though all met unseemly ends amongst those,
whom did they own.
This candle, the witching finger, is all that remains and it is this, as fate permits, I shalt attain.
It art mine, and mine alone.



Enterprising I was, wanton I became
To possess it, this my boon and this my bane.
Dreadful white has begun to steal into my stately tresses, once a luxurious sable.

Wretched lines have etched themselves into my comely lineaments,
formerly smooth as Grecian marble.
The bloom of health by whose scent I were once suffused,
Hadst cruelly retracted all it had lent.
At two score years no amount of riches from the regal coffers could stay these carnal changes, nor allay these fears.
What of this enchanted candle, I wondered on and on,
What of the knowing of my end that it may proffer?

Thus resolved, lives and misery were bought and sold as was my wont, as was my cause,
Forget this not,
treachery can be the coin of the realm for one bedecked with royal helm.

Though not until the candle’s final keeper, a magus sequestered in sylvan hermitage, fens of mysteries deep and evil deeper,
was paid call,
did the candle give up its secrets and mine will ensnare evermore,
in its throes and binding thrall.

In times afore, my henchmen’s daggers would well open tender throats, yet ere this magus life’s blood suffused his rainment with deathly burnish,
twas with these grave words my retinue were furnished.

“The last of the five, the sigel of he who with all fortune lies!” and plunged gilded athame into his own breast, censuring any further inquiry, any behest

Madman and wood though he be, this only further vexed sensibilities.
For sooth, of fortunes he spoke,
Confirming the corpus,
musty scrolls and texts over which I poured – this candle, this darkly fetish, presages the means to the holder’s impending fortune.
Though lurking in my bosom deep,
seat of mine suffering where dread suspect doth claw forth
that this candle held other Arcanum,
other ends it worketh towards.

II

There it sat ‘pon my chest,
With a stillness almost sepulchral
There I huddled in my chamber recesses,
Crouched in form, maddened of mind,
Flint fragments turning over and over in my feverish hands in meter to the torturous time,
Of that power emanating creeping forth from that candle, cursed candle,
I could sense it with every fiber I wert conceived.
There in the darkness, I dare not wonder how
Wroth became the candle, it surely did, as I live and breathe.

These ponderings summoned that susurrus to redouble sure, as upon the gloom it fed and fed
The candle swore that all my yearnings for fortunes true and fortunes yet unmade, it would propitiate,
If only that wick I were to immolate.

A great restlessness possessed my frame,
Still in my hand, the flint scourged my palm flesh as it was turned, as it was turned, as it was turned.

Rings of beryl, jacinth,
And ambergris-scented silks,
noble lineage,
title, and lands crowned.
Of what use be these?
When mine turrets crumble and portraits rot,
My die wilt still be cast,
In that common repose, I, as all am doomed to lie
Am I not?

I dare wonder no longer.
Across my darkened abode I strode candle-wards in spite,
Of that wretched candle,
Faerie spire or devils pike in the shadows it felt the same, alike.

The sparks leapt from the flint, forged in the furnace of my lusts
In the fires of desire, with reason left for dross
I am at a loss at to how with no draft present with guttering, with becoming
that flame did blaze, as by law it now must.
This was no light of welcome and balmy warmth,
not that of the coming dawn or the well-tended hearth.
More akin the light of Rapture,
A thousand thrones.
that which smites as wrath incarnate.

III
Owing to that candles eerie spell,
As a foundling calf at the abattoir’s entry doth arrest,
owing to the rawness of its own fear.
So didst my limbs go rigid, as by catalepsy or fit,
All together vapid.
while my eyes could stare
While my ears to hear

How to relate a light that does not illuminate
Rather decays the very darkness, in a cry so shrill as to pierce both plate and mail
To lay bare this scene,
lit just so,
on my chamber walls with an enchanted gleam.

My fortune that magus presaged,
Was the end to my mortal suffering,
What’s more,
‘twere not in many distant days in a time of wisened age,
Where my hopes be hung,
To my horror, that candle foretold within its dimly glowing portal,
That my very chamber with every content taken into account, shalt be my rest and requiem sung.

My chest of black poplar and myself, still as stone and facing front I last saw.
Darkness didst its dominion regain, no quarter given, as if over the chamber a heavy pall were lain.
Quietus, Quietus,
Strains of that shrillness, the tempest flown
still hang in the vacant chamber heard by none,
Alas, I hast already passed on, a westering sun.

Shall I tell you the tale of one maiden’s woe
Penned in avarice and signed by ruth
Shall I tell her deeds and doings?
and what were sown?
Then let it be so, consider it told.

Pride comes before the Fall, Avenge, Avenge

Pride before the Fall- Avenge, Avenge
I Medea, recite this incantation,

This retribution, for my love,
my betrayer,
my Jason.

Vile, loathsome serpent farewell,
farewell my enemy.
May his winged minions hasten you to the grave.

Save your deceit and lies, and have this bejeweled robe for thy adulterous bride.
Raiment as fair, as my curse,
to burn and tear her fine skin less none but lepers will with she converse.

Well I know that for this sin,
awaits Hades fire dark and dim,
burning tomb and stench of mire--

Fall with I, proud handsome sire!

It is said that Hell hath no fury like the woman scorned,
and so it shall be written for an eternity more,
Hell hath no fury as my vengeance,
upon our first born.