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Oct. 27th, 2011 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreHey, Halloween is next Monday! Let's have some creepy poetry!
Ghostly Things:
Silent Hill, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Anne says she dreams sometimes -- and so do I
About the child we saw go by.
In the late afternoon we saw her pass,
Slowly and without a sound. The deep grass
Bent before her, as where a soft wind goes.
Except we know that no wind ever blows
The dark deep grass on Silent Hill.
My grandma says that back before her day,
There was a fine house there upon the crest
Where now a blackened chimney leans to rest
Against the sky. And now and then nearby,
Like a leaf of ash, a dark bird drifts without a cry.
Nothing else goes there. No boy climbs up to play.
Even the wild deer seem to keep away.
But Anne is not afraid. And sometimes we go near
To listen to the soft hush, deep as fear,
Heavy smoke, that seems to hang there still,
Where only dreams walk now -- on Silent Hill.
Anne says she dreams sometimes -- and so do I --
About the child we saw go by,
On Silent Hill.
Eighteen Years, by Donna Lynch
We can't tell you what we saw that night
And even if we could
you'd never believe it
Eighteen years and I'm really
not sure that I do
I hear from my friend
And we talk
about life
about women
and he tells me again how Manhattan is eating him alive
And at the end of the call he says
What was it? What did we see that night?
Eighteen years and it haunts him
He still doesn't know
But there was something there
at the edge of the woods
And it made no sense
Not then and not now
But the night was so cold
And we saw it was breathing
And we know that it saw us
breathing too
But my blood still runs cold when I drive past those woods
And when he asks me at least twice a year
what it was
Still I can't tell him
And I doubt I ever will
Eighteen years, I can't say it
But I'm sure it's still there
Monsters:
Attack of the Crab Monsters, by Lawrence Raab
Even from the beach I could sense it—
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it’s gone. And look
at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked
like fate and I wanted to say, “Don’t you see?
So what if you’re a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story.”
Sure, we’re on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling
into caves, and you’re out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligee.
Yes, we’re way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until
nothing’s left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I’d like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I’ve lost
my voice. I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout—the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.
Lovecraftian Horror:
Jar of Salts, by Gemma Files
I found it here, under the floorboards,
labelled in a spidery hand: O nameless name,
old ancestor, return. I swear, if I am asked,
to speak these words, pray to no known god,
burn herbs, pour out the contents,
mix well with blood (my own will do), and wait.
The stopper, a plug of wax, is flecked
with grains of dusty incense—
a charnel odor at the back of the tongue,
unexpellable, sussurant, sere.
Who knows who hid it here? Who laid
these clues, a widdershins path, for me
to follow? Who sends me dreams of deep
and rocky fathoms, drowned bells tolling?
I only know I was not made like others,
my jawbones traced with the fluting
of unopened gills. How, reading these labels,
I feel my eyes already burn, begin to bulge.
The smell of salt is everywhere, sick-fragrant,
like decay—muck and silt, old entrails, slime.
All the varying grossness of some fruiting trench
that rings this world, Leviathan-vast,
where sunken Ys’s gates gape still, waiting.
This much I feared, even before I opened it:
Those of my blood live long, then fall
forward, into water. The open hole
at the dead sea’s bottom. So what matter
whose name I call now, in the gathering dark?
Our echo thrums forward, cleaving stone to bone.
Fairy Tales:
Grandmother, by Laurence Snydal
Inside the wolf I touched his liver with my tongue
I wrapped my fingers all around his heart
And blessed the beat of blood. I lay me down
Between his ribs and let each sighing lung
Massage the ache from these old bones. Apart
From earth, a part of older earth, I'd grown
A snout and such big eyes and teeth so bright
They shone like sunlight. There within the cave
I called my home, I lay within his dream.
I don't remember why she lit the light.
I don't remember who she thought she'd save.
I think about the axe and want to scream.
Gretel in Darkness, by Louise Gluck
This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas...
Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.
No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firms,
the spires of that gleaming kiln -
Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.
General Creepiness:
O Where Are You Going, by W H Auden
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."
"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"
"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."
"Out of this house," said rider to reader,
"Yours never will," said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you," said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
The Warning, by Adelaide Crapsey
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk... as strange, as still...
A white moth flew... Why am I grown
So cold?
What creepy poems do you like?
Ghostly Things:
Silent Hill, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Anne says she dreams sometimes -- and so do I
About the child we saw go by.
In the late afternoon we saw her pass,
Slowly and without a sound. The deep grass
Bent before her, as where a soft wind goes.
Except we know that no wind ever blows
The dark deep grass on Silent Hill.
My grandma says that back before her day,
There was a fine house there upon the crest
Where now a blackened chimney leans to rest
Against the sky. And now and then nearby,
Like a leaf of ash, a dark bird drifts without a cry.
Nothing else goes there. No boy climbs up to play.
Even the wild deer seem to keep away.
But Anne is not afraid. And sometimes we go near
To listen to the soft hush, deep as fear,
Heavy smoke, that seems to hang there still,
Where only dreams walk now -- on Silent Hill.
Anne says she dreams sometimes -- and so do I --
About the child we saw go by,
On Silent Hill.
Eighteen Years, by Donna Lynch
We can't tell you what we saw that night
And even if we could
you'd never believe it
Eighteen years and I'm really
not sure that I do
I hear from my friend
And we talk
about life
about women
and he tells me again how Manhattan is eating him alive
And at the end of the call he says
What was it? What did we see that night?
Eighteen years and it haunts him
He still doesn't know
But there was something there
at the edge of the woods
And it made no sense
Not then and not now
But the night was so cold
And we saw it was breathing
And we know that it saw us
breathing too
But my blood still runs cold when I drive past those woods
And when he asks me at least twice a year
what it was
Still I can't tell him
And I doubt I ever will
Eighteen years, I can't say it
But I'm sure it's still there
Monsters:
Attack of the Crab Monsters, by Lawrence Raab
Even from the beach I could sense it—
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it’s gone. And look
at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked
like fate and I wanted to say, “Don’t you see?
So what if you’re a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story.”
Sure, we’re on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling
into caves, and you’re out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligee.
Yes, we’re way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until
nothing’s left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I’d like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I’ve lost
my voice. I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout—the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.
Lovecraftian Horror:
Jar of Salts, by Gemma Files
I found it here, under the floorboards,
labelled in a spidery hand: O nameless name,
old ancestor, return. I swear, if I am asked,
to speak these words, pray to no known god,
burn herbs, pour out the contents,
mix well with blood (my own will do), and wait.
The stopper, a plug of wax, is flecked
with grains of dusty incense—
a charnel odor at the back of the tongue,
unexpellable, sussurant, sere.
Who knows who hid it here? Who laid
these clues, a widdershins path, for me
to follow? Who sends me dreams of deep
and rocky fathoms, drowned bells tolling?
I only know I was not made like others,
my jawbones traced with the fluting
of unopened gills. How, reading these labels,
I feel my eyes already burn, begin to bulge.
The smell of salt is everywhere, sick-fragrant,
like decay—muck and silt, old entrails, slime.
All the varying grossness of some fruiting trench
that rings this world, Leviathan-vast,
where sunken Ys’s gates gape still, waiting.
This much I feared, even before I opened it:
Those of my blood live long, then fall
forward, into water. The open hole
at the dead sea’s bottom. So what matter
whose name I call now, in the gathering dark?
Our echo thrums forward, cleaving stone to bone.
Fairy Tales:
Grandmother, by Laurence Snydal
Inside the wolf I touched his liver with my tongue
I wrapped my fingers all around his heart
And blessed the beat of blood. I lay me down
Between his ribs and let each sighing lung
Massage the ache from these old bones. Apart
From earth, a part of older earth, I'd grown
A snout and such big eyes and teeth so bright
They shone like sunlight. There within the cave
I called my home, I lay within his dream.
I don't remember why she lit the light.
I don't remember who she thought she'd save.
I think about the axe and want to scream.
Gretel in Darkness, by Louise Gluck
This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas...
Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.
No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firms,
the spires of that gleaming kiln -
Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.
General Creepiness:
O Where Are You Going, by W H Auden
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."
"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"
"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."
"Out of this house," said rider to reader,
"Yours never will," said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you," said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
The Warning, by Adelaide Crapsey
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk... as strange, as still...
A white moth flew... Why am I grown
So cold?
What creepy poems do you like?
