MY WORK

THE GRIMALKIN

The old brindled cat

Sits hunched by the hearth,

Her gaze lost in flames

That flicker and sear.

What stirs the Grimalkin,

Her hoary form curled

In disdain’s tight coil,

A shadow of years?

Does she muse on witches,

Their tongues cursed with Satan,

Burned ‘neath a cruel sky

In ashes and tears?

Or does her arcane stare

Conjure storms to rend,

Leaving naught but ruin

Where silence appears?

CHANGLING

Changeling

I curse what you are,

hateful fay, loveless,

wild with restraint’s absence.

You snatched my boy

from his crib’s embrace,

left your elfish waif

in his stolen place.

No living soul

praises or hails you,

wretched wraith of woe. The universe scorns you,

casts you out, forged this cruel trade.

Under the rusty red moon,

in its blood-tinted phase,

I will give you my soul

so again my boy can play

LUPINE LAMENT

My human soul

Wanes ‘neath the lupine’s growl,

For dawn’s cold gleam

That mocks my plight.

It seeps through cracks

I lie, awake, lamenting,

The blood I spilled—

A mother’s son, unborn.

They glimpsed no beast

In shadows I became, a wraith,

Where love decays

‘Mid endless cries.

A void of lost time,

A tongue with blood encrusted,

My hollow wail

Drifts through the gloom.

CRAVE

Beneath the crypt’s damp stone I dwell,

Where lost souls falter, cursed to stray,

Their footsteps echo in my spell,

A comorbid wraith in shadows’ play.

Within these iron bars they lie,

On slabs of cold, ancestral slate,

Seasoned with tears, filleted by sighs,

Sautéed in night’s unyielding hate—

Lest flesh turn pallid, void of dread.

I feast by candlelight’s faint gleam,

My epicurean crave takes hold,

Till moonlit hours strip each dream,

Their bones arrayed in ivory cold,

Adorn my hall, my organ’s throne,

Not buried ‘neath the grave’s lone moan.

THE WIDOW'S VEIL

In castle ruin, moss entwined,

The widow wails were shadows creep,

Her veil a shroud, by madness lined,

Where spectral hands in silence weep.

The chandelier, with cobwebs crowned,

Sways ‘neath the moon’s unyielding stare,

Her lover’s ghost, in chains unbound,

Drifts through the air with hollow glare.

Each midnight toll, her feast begins,

On grief distilled, a bitter wine,

Her laughter carves the silence thin,

Till dawn reveals her soul’s decline—

A widow’s crave, eternal, dire,

Feeds on the embers of desire.

HOUSES

My house of sand,

A tomb that shifts and groans,

Spawns dead trees with clawing roots,

My pleas unleash a buzzing swarm—

Blood-red bees with venomous stings.

My house of glass,

A mirror cracked by screams,

Shatters down in torrents black,

My wail births shadows with sharp wings--pitch black fiends that claw the air.

My house of cards,

A crypt where madness reigns,

Collapses ‘neath a skeletal roar,

My fractured mind ignites the dark—

Ghostly acetate, a shroud of dread.

MORE THAN JUST LIGHT

The moon looms large in midnight’s shroud,

its gleam invades my trembling heart,

I feel your gaze,

a chilling vow,

when moonlit eyes with mine depart.

The moon, our curse,

our ghastly guide,

endures through death’s unyielding tide,

a witness to our love’s decay,

it bleeds its curse from skies of gray.

The moon is more than mere cold light,

a spectral orb of endless night,

its glow binds us in blood and woe,

a chain that drags where’er we go.

The moon hangs low, a festering gleam,

It carves my heart with silent scream,

Your love, a husk, turns cold and true,

Beneath its gaze, I rot with you.

When moonlit eyes with mine depart.

The moon distorts with every phase,

Our love unravels, torn, profane,

We spill our fears ‘neath pallid rays,

Through years, its light gnaws at our veins.

NOT A WINTER

I am a winter, nor its thrall,

No, not I—a Goth who mauls.

Crystal trees, their branches bind,Slicing winds that flay my soul,

Chattering teeth in icy dread,Birds that freeze, too mute to cry,Snowy streets with blood-flecked sleet—I pine for the touch of summer’s heat.

I am not within winter’s grip, yet here

On Christmas Eve, I pluck the tree,Its colors—blue, red, green—turn black

Once Jack Frost lays his hands on me.

Everything twists to rotting meat and dark blood,

Wine sours, cheese molds and decays,

Nativity scenes with hollow stares,

Trains, they screech and twist on rusted rails,

Then crash through shadowed halls,

As the family screams with ghastly pleas,

While I attempt to burn down that fucking tree.

No, I am not a winter’s obedient gnome,

But Christmas still binds me to my cursed plight,

A frozen specter ‘twixt life and death,

Where despair rots within through endless night.