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Pumpkin Sunrise
over Wollaston Harbor


Plump, ripened, birthed

from the orb of earth,

a pumpkin sun rises


subduing the sky

with soft-hued light

of orange mist.


We don’t know

if our every thought comes

from within or without.


We don’t know

what it is we hold in our hands

or what we’ve overlooked.


October 27, 2023



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Second Communion

Kneeling silent
amidst a slither
of hissing snakes
he feels them coil
within his hair
encircle his brow
ride over eyes
brush lips
chase twitching tails
around his neck
and slide down
to tightly twine
like ivy vines
arms and chest
crotch and legs
then glide around
the knees and calves
to rope his ankles
in this den
he’d dug for them
when he turned seven.

Sounds like fun! Some years ago I did a book called Pulp Sonnets, all based on Gothic, pulp, B-movie tropes, and the ones below were adaptations of key scenes in Frankenstein and Dracula. What you are looking for? Or something oriented more towards younger readers?

The Second Death of Dracula

Jonathan tossed the box from the cart it rode
and we prized the lid back with a screeching sound.
Lying in the box there on the ground,
the Count was covered with dark soil the rude
fall from the gypsy wagon to the road
had scattered over him. He was death, bound
in a wax image, and his red eyes glared
with the vindictive awful gaze
I knew so well. I saw their baleful hate
turn to triumph as the last sun flared.
But then the great knife flashed and swept on high.
I shrieked as the blade sheared through the white neck
and the Bowie knife plunged through the heart. And yet,
a wonder happened then before our eyes:
just as that body turned to dust and ceased,
those twisted features settled into peace.


The Monster Speaks

I am malicious since I am miserable.
Am I not shunned and feared by every man?
Even you, creator, want to pull
me into pieces, you, who stitched this hand
to wrist, this wrist to forearm, arm to shoulder;
your holy electricity restored
my graveyard flesh to warmth, but now you’re colder
than glacial ice on an Antarctic shore.
Since you’re playing God, I’ll act my part,
not Christ brought back to die---I’ll play the devil
(a better role) and make your good my evil.
I cannot make you love, so I’ll do worse:
I’ll make you fear. I’ll desolate your heart.
I’ll make you curse the hour of your birth.

And here are some by others...


The Kraken


Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sirens

Sirens are singing monsters of the sea,
With many voices and varied melody.
Often the reckless sailors passing near
Are sung to sleep with sweetness in their ear,
And ships are wrecked and all aboard are drowned.
Although the mariners who perished found
A lovely virgin from above the waist---
Below, birdlegs were monstrously misplaced.


Bishop Theobaldus
Translated by Willis Barnstone

From The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, “Regin Tells of Fafnir's Transformation”

"The night waned into the morning, and still above the Hoard
Sat Reidmar clad in purple; but Fafnir took his sword,
And I took my smithying-hammer, and apart in the world we went;
But I came aback in the even, and my heart was heavy and spent;
And I longed, but fear was upon me and I durst not go to the Gold;
So I lay in the house of my toil mid the things I had fashioned of old;
And methought as I lay in my bed 'twixt waking and slumber of night
That I heard the tinkling metal and beheld the hall alight,
But I slept and dreamed of the Gods, and the things that never have slept,
Till I woke to a cry and a clashing and forth from the bed I leapt,
And there by the heaped-up Elf-gold my brother Fafnir stood,
And there at his feet lay Reidmar and reddened the Treasure with blood;
And e'en as I looked on his eyen they glazed and whitened with death,
And forth on the torch-litten hall he shed his latest breath.

"But I looked on Fafnir and trembled for he wore the Helm of Dread,
And his sword was bare in his hand, and the sword and the hand were red
With the blood of our father Reidmar, and his body was wrapped in gold,
With the ruddy-gleaming mailcoat of whose fellow hath nought been told,
And it seemed as I looked upon him that he grew beneath mine eyes:
And then in the mid-hall's silence did his dreadful voice arise:

"'I have slain my father Reidmar, that I alone might keep
The Gold of the darksome places, the Candle of the Deep.
I am such as the Gods have made me, lest the Dwarf-kind people the earth,
Or mingle their ancient wisdom with its short-lived latest birth.
I shall dwell alone henceforward, and the Gold and its waxing curse,
I shall brood on them both together, let my life grow better or worse.
And I am a King henceforward and long shall be my life,
And the Gold shall grow with my longing, for I shall hide it from strife,'
And hoard up the Ring of Andvari in the house thine hand hath built.
O thou, wilt thou tarry and tarry, till I cast thy blood on the guilt?
Lo, I am a King for ever, and alone on the Gold shall I dwell
And do no deed to repent of and leave no tale to tell.'

"More awful grew his visage as he spake the word of dread,
And no more durst I behold him, but with heart a-cold I fled;
I fled from the glorious house my hands had made so fair,
As poor as the new-born baby with nought of raiment or gear:
I fled from the heaps of gold, and my goods were the eager will,
And the heart that remembereth all, and the hand that may never be still.

"Then unto this land I came, and that was long ago.
As men-folk count the years; and I taught them to reap and to sow,

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"And I grew the master of masters—Think thou how strange it is
That the sword in the hands of a stripling shall one day end all this!
"Yet oft mid all my wisdom did I long for my brother's part,
And Fafnir's mighty kingship weighed heavy on my heart
When the Kings of the earthly kingdoms would give me golden gifts
From out of their scanty treasures, due pay for my cunning shifts.
And once—didst thou number the years thou wouldst think it long ago—
I wandered away to the country from whence our stem did grow.

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"Then I went to the pillared hall-stead, and lo, huge heaps of gold,
And to and fro amidst them a mighty Serpent rolled:
Then my heart grew chill with terror, for I thought on the wont of our race,
And I, who had lost their cunning, was a man in a deadly place,
A feeble man and a swordless in the lone destroyer's fold;
For I knew that the Worm was Fafnir, the Wallower on the Gold.

"So I gathered my strength and fled, and hid my shame again
Mid the foolish sons of men-folk; and the more my hope was vain,
The more I longed for the Treasure, and deliv'rance from the yoke:
And yet passed the generations, and I dwelt with the short-lived folk.

"Long years, and long years after, the tale of men-folk told
How up on the Glittering Heath was the house and the dwelling of gold,
And within that house was the Serpent, and the Lord of the Fearful Face:
Then I wondered sore of the desert; for I thought of the golden place
My hands of old had builded; for I knew by many a sign
That the Fearful Face was my brother, that the blood of the Worm was mine.


William Morris

The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly

Once I loved a spider
When I was born a fly,
A velvet-footed spider
With a gown of rainbow-dye.
She ate my wings and gloated.
She bound me with a hair.
She drove me to her parlor
Above her winding stair.
To educate young spiders
She took me all apart.
My ghost came back to haunt her.
I saw her eat my heart.


Vachel Lindsay

The Wendigo
by Ogden Nash

The Wendigo,
The Wendigo!
Its eyes are ice and indigo!
Its blood is rank and yellowish!
Its voice is hoarse and bellowish!
Its tentacles are slithery,
And scummy,
Slimy,
Leathery!
Its lips are hungry blubbery,
And smacky,
Sucky,
Rubbery!

The Wendigo,
The Wendigo!
I saw it just a friend ago!
Last night it lurked in Canada;
Tonight, on your veranada!
As you are lolling hammockwise
It contemplates you stomachwise.
You loll,
It contemplates,
It lollops.
The rest is merely gulps and gollops.

Here are a couple, the first one by Edwin Muir the second one by me.

The Shades

The bodiless spirits waiting chill
In the ports of black Nonentity
For passage to the living land,
Without eyes strive to see,
Without ears strain to hear,
Stretch an unincarnate hand
In greeting to the hollow hill
Above the insubstantial sea,
The billow curving on the sand,
The bird sitting on the tree;
And in love and in fear
Ensnare the smile, condense the tear,
Rehears the play of evil and good,
The comedy and the tragedy.
Until the summoned ghosts appear
In patterned march around the hill
Against the hoofed and horned wood.

—Edwin Muir (1940s)


For That Which Has Fallen
All Souls

For that which has fallen,
Moisture-seeking crawlers
And palsied hands of leaves
Unclasp summer’s trophies.
For that which has fallen,
The moon’s a beggar’s bowl.
For that which has fallen
Come those who’ve passed over
Beyond the veil of sight
On hieroglyphic feathers
Inscrutable forever,
With light, air, and mist
Tangled gray in branches,
With ghouls that guard our doors,
With olives and horse-chestnuts
In silver dreams and armor—
For that which has fallen
Returns. And as for us,
We wish, we come to see,
To go down, tired or happy,
To that which has fallen.

Eating Sardines on All Hallows Eve
 

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Eating the Flesh of Sardines on All Hallows Eve

My thoughts are crammed like sardines
inside my cranial can.
It’s hard to tell if they aim to attack me,
back me into an early grave, or beg me
to consume them before they consume me.
There’s more to me than meets the eye.
There’s more to me than bile and blood.
My thought streams scream, turn to flood.




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