A Midsummer's Nightmare

A far – flung tale, from the lips of a fictitious man.
A storyteller in the land of horrors: -


Stories – respite to a bleeding ghoul,
The spirit of an unsatisfied soul.
The dark digests of a burning moon,
After the candle in your room.

The hideous creatures that you beheld,
Took you for a ride on wood to be fell’d.
A sun that refused to rise
In the land of witches, never wise,
Went up and down the skies,
‘Cross an old man’s dying eyes.


Just as night saw the last wick burn,
The l’il one did twist and turn.
In its sleep saw wondrous things,
Stricken hands spinning heads of long – gone kings.

Leering faces, ripp’d from their sorry bodies
‘Dorning walls in perfect Dees.
Blood that dried upon the tearways,
Will flow again on July freeways.


Dark forms upon the road,
Hooded and gown’d – The Black Metal Lode.
Reeking shapes throwing lengthy shadows,
Rising from graves, sporting Luciferean haloes.

Never looking up, eyes on hell’s brink;
Souls banished, sentenced to the devilish drink.
A dreaded realm of death and fire,
Of scalded bodies, ‘fraid to spark a master’s ire.


The rise of apathy, a recidivist’s pleasure;
A soul with no remorse – old Satan’s treasure.
Rising materialism that killed a saint,
Such cold assassins, seem’d usual but ain’t.


And when the book was shut, the story done,
The teller I saw, his eyes with wicked cun (ning).
Spelling out words with evil ease –
‘Twas the Devil himself, that brought me to my knees.

A Wizened Speaks

On the breaches of a lake,
At the foot o’ the mounts,
A wizened spake:
Of times far past,
Of memories before the Raj.

***

Of royalty that never believed.
A greater power that had come
To annex, but through his child’s fair hand.
To consent would be to lose:
His life, land and all that ever was his.

Blighted by his queens’ capacity,
He was the lost, the loser and the loner.
If not for the story the wizened spake,
I would have left in a trice, elsewhere.

A Moghul’s hate of temples
And all that was Hindu,
As sweet to the royal ears,
As nectar from a raided hive.

The hills were moved,
And in a month, they did it.
‘Twas the most splendid thing that
Human eyes did ever behold.
Aah! The senses would fail,
Just imagining its columns.

Thank’d did the convert, and erected
The serpent umbrella’d
As high as the temple spire.

The army came, and went.
The disgusted guest did speak of alliance,
But with a land nearby.

The signature of a lost wonder,
Lies as dust, now under
The form of the meeting tusks.

***

Saying so, did the wizened shift
His eyes upon the peak;

And vanish into the rising mist.