Below is a poem I recently wrote simultaneously with a short horror story. The short story was read on Trio Simpatico, the podcast I co-host. We produced the reading for our string of horror themed episodes in October, and a portion of the poem is used to close out that piece.
Both the story and the poem are based on a dream which my wife relayed to me one morning. Her dream was splendidly cryptic and contained some really frightening imagery. The short story, called Ghost Storm, is an elaboration of the nightmare as my wife told it to me, while the poem is more of an interpretation of the same basic ideas though most of the details are transferred to a completely different time and place.
If you’d like to hear our audio production of Ghost Storm click HERE I’ll most likely be posting the text here in the weeks to follow.
The poem is below the break, enjoy!
Dread and Revelries of Spring
Two lovers walked down a rural path
to a grey and distant gale.
With their spirits raised by such a storm,
for the dry crops soon would fail.
The long weeks had passed, so bright and hot
that the very earth was quite dried, brown, and cracked.
Older locals wept, recalling the famines,
during times when harvests lacked
Playfully they laughed at rolling clouds,
stripping off their outer wear.
Partaking in revelries of spring
as rain dripped down flesh and hair.
When all at once the scene had shifted.
What seemed to be a springtime shower
nimbus clouds, moments ago, full of whimsy
now held a darker power.
That midday sky turned black and twisting,
clouds draping across the Earth.
All the while jagged strikes of lightning
backlit a foul demon birth.
Where once was no one, now stood monsters
shambling strangely through those occult mists
Inhuman figures strode with huge proportions
Raising howls and black clawed fists!
The raging storm clouds then formed faces.
A menace of sight befell
our frightened pair of half-clothed pilgrims,
and dead eyes seemed to compel!
For that couple wanted nothing more
then to quickly flee and be alone.
Though sadly, they could turn away no longer
for their thoughts were not their own.
Panicked, their rain drenched forms marched onward,
all resistance seemed to fail.
Onward toward those obscured creatures
came a deep and hungry wail.
Then those horrible mystic faces
welcomed the pair with a sick fanged grin.
The couple trudged blankly into storm and fog
and soon they would be within.
There they would become enshrouded with
those dark horrors and the rain.
Hid by the descending chaos clouds
and those faces they contain.
Unable to halt their own progress
they moved as prisoners of the mind.
Unconscious repulsion seeping throughout them
pondering the dread they’d find.
Who knows what grotesque and hellish sights
were revealed to them from there?
Or what other baleful, tortured shouts
did entwine that tempest air?
Not least of which, there can be no doubt,
were their own sad and piteous moans.
But, with a chorus of screams surrounding them
They were deafened to their own.
