Best Cocytus Poems
Hades and Tormented Souls (the Dwelling)
(presenting a fragment of the second part promised)
Where the dark wind blows, lies abound
deep into a ravenous, hellish pit.
Lost souls cry and moan deep under ground
under evil torture each must submit.
Dark Hades, ancients called this gloom
agonizing souls, cast into Hell.
Hideous monsters working in every room
death's stinking odor the smell.
Shrill cries from pain immensely great
as tortured minds see so clear.
The miseries they and others sadly ate
embracing the dark seeds of fear.
Panic in one room, terror in another
burning brands searing souls.
So sweet the agonizing cries for mother
as demons reach their goals.
Each torment according to its worst sin
eyes gouged , for depraved acts.
Hearts sliced, tossed into a burning bin
tongues torched for lying facts.
Hands crushed for stealing other's gains
whips slashing across bloody backs.
Every torture imagined for greater pains
even burning in oil soaked sacks.
Deepest level, reserved for special guests
darkest demons there get to play.
Inflicting deeper pain by evil's requests
to those that thought never to pay!
Where the dark wind blows, lies abound
deep into a ravenous, hellish pit.
Lost souls cry and moan deep under ground
under evil torture each must submit.
Robert J. Lindley, 10-07-2015
Previous Note from the Acheron poem:
Previously presented was part one-
The Tumid River of Acheron (the journey) Part One-Revised.
The journey into HADES by way of crossing the Styx.
The river Styx is actually an offshoot of the Acheron
that splits into the Styx and the Cocytus.
Part two now has two lines written. It will be titled ,
Hades and Tormented Souls (the Dwelling)..
I have no preset limit to the second part, may be
longer or shorter. I suspect it will be even longer.
I hope the readers enjoy this write. I wanted to do
something dark and move away from all my love, romance
and Nature writes. A bit of variety to stir my
imagination...
I have made several corrections to this poem in the last
few days.
I sink, and drown in all my sorrows
Bring me to darkness where I can forget.
Grant me that privilege, let me burrow
My final resting place, my final bed.
Forget, life, every word I ever said.
"I swim in darkness", once I wrote that poem.
And still I swim, Styx's water vast and endless.
Sometimes words break through the foam
of waves crashing, sentences that press
an imprint in my wrinkled, blood soaked flesh.
No words describe the pain as much as Cocytus,
in ancient times a river filled by tears betrayed,
now howled by me, horrendous exodus,
washed away to Acheron our blood, paid
dearly by my living still, for them too late.
Oh river of fire, oh Phlegethon, you burned
My body down, my mind to ashes grey.
Make me forget this terror, let no stone unturned
To wipe my memory, please Lethe, clay
on your banks, and let me forever stay
And sink, and drown in all my sorrows
Bring me to darkness where I can forget.
Grant me that privilege, let me burrow
My final resting place, my final bed.
Forget, life, every word I ever said.
***
January 28, 2017
Under the feet of heartless passersby, a name no one knows
where from, rolling along the path blood-stained; the name
wounded from time after time is kicked and trampled
by the absentminded strollers drifting along the way
no one cares where it leads to
the name, if only not returned,
may still be lingering in the ears of the lover
as a sweet nothing; the name still remains in the heart of lover
who wanders in the wilderness calling and crying from irresistible yearning;
the lover, however, grew tired at last,
and became a wondering name itself,
it comes to the bank of the river Cocytus dragging its feet,
wails, and throws itself in the river and becomes a tear drop
in the end.
The tear drop carried by the Cocytus’ water
becomes the name that is downright ignored
now tossing around in the field cruelly treated without justice.
Although I have come this far fumbling a difficult way,
grasping the trying path, I hear no whisper my darling
once echoed softly in my ears; the name covered in bumps
and bruises rolling on the field holding her deeply missed
sweet and tender whisper in her bosom
the poor name, it would never been rather happier
if it threw itself into the Lethe and drifted away
in the water of oblivion.
Sarcomas hatch like caviar
in St. Jude chemo-fire inversions,
where leviathans lay magnetars
to suck the blood of
virgins.
Their celestial suckers nurse their mothers
through quantum-dot tunnels, converging
what little life force
might milk
metastatic roots while purging,
and scute steroids discarding the hair
that ganoid scales like
sturgeon
merging baby dragon parts there
in alternative medicine oceans.
Tumors transcend and
succor
is owed unknown futile fealty
to infant deities who must atone
for immature keepsakes in realty.
Closure
pawns its symbiote spawn upon
weapons in-waiting to wormhole the realms.
Women weep oxytocin. Tissues
wyvern at the hel-
minthe transcriptase cocytus kiln
celling tussin-flavored scolex helix;
hydras caduce their chimera-filmed,
reptile-elm, viral
fetus.
Ignis fatuus reflective glasses
wither the pyrrhic ghostly gasses.
Parapsychic worms
poison
parents’ life-projected choices.
Jacobs slither the lamprey ladders.
Jihadists excise
their end-
ocrine matters... glazing the X,
lambs praise their ossifying father’s gaze.
Depucelation
contracts
‘an eye for an eye’: hexacanth.
The oncospheric galaxies equate;
retroviridae-cestodes celebrate
swapping
meat of child for theft of fare
on trans-dimensional photonic pairs,
where cycles continue out there, memes
extremophiled.
Deep in the dark, I stand
Nothing but darkness surrounds me
“Am I dead?” I ask myself
No, if I were, I would be in heaven
Well seeing as I already lived in a hell
But didn’t they say that heaven is bright, white
Someone said it has angels floating around
Guarding us as we eat and drink
At the banquet set by God
This is nothing like that, well I see nothing
Maybe I am in hell, but I don’t see Lucifer
Waiting to drag me into the ninth circle of hell
I don’t see the Cocytus anywhere near
I don’t feel cold, I feel clueless
Maybe this is the purgatory
Realization hits me, it is slow
I am in space, just space with nothing but air for me to breathe
No friends no foe, except my own mind
I grope around to feel something touch anything
I want to move, to get out
I walk not knowing where I am or where I am going
I walk searching for my sunshine, for just a ray
But I turn up with nothing except for the feeling that I should be somewhere else
Doing something else where I not only have my sunshine but my rainbows
My beautiful life I pictured is somewhere
I just have to find it, before it is too late
I walk and walk with nothing but hope
Hoping I will find it some day
And have my very own fairy tale.
strobe into the secret night
the scene of our sacred crime
not just any old crime
I confess to you but
I cry most insidious in design
a crime worthy of the divine
what can such a crime be
that even a God can shame thee?
‘tis but a crime of most elegant jest!
for my soul has been down
to the lower levels of Dantes infernos,
it kinda likes it there
the ice is but a thrill
the old demon sleeps
as I watch faces scream and talk and wink
in the frozen lake Cocytus
but I shall not make a fuss
but do I carry on
none, not I, shall I fear
for I know not what I am doing
how could I,
how could I, the courts will not hear
or understand
do such shameful things my eye sees
all but naught
and still, I sit here or stand, nevermind
in my demise, thinking
things that no mortal should
consider or aspire to see
here before me the scene of the crime
awash in cobalt in Crimson
all painted in colors of justice and purity
but I see not
but I do hear
the calls from the holly cost
I have laid waste to Valhalla
holy halls but what crime, what causes
how can I devise, conspire
contrive and execute
with supreme device
so insidious that even my soul will be
loathed even in a divine comedy
a bitter hell
if only you could know my inner planes
and the pain, the sadness brings
the massacre of my children’s dreams.
what am I but just a lonely servant
to that which is ruled by my heart
I love thy light bringer, Lucifer
I linger here with the heavy blade
glistening something wet slides
from its chrome shaft
along its razor edge
down splashing in pools of Crimson black & cobalt fears.
The car has come to a stop which the engine grinds
no more, all awash in Crimson and cobalt,
I stumble away from this crime scene
I lay waste to my inner mind's eye…
I welcome this blessed night…
I'm headed to the holocaust, like to come along?
I guess not?!
such the pitty...
Aeneid Book 6: The Descent into the Underworld
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The Sibyl began to speak to Aeneas:
“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”
Keywords/Tags: Virgil, Aeneid, descent, underworld, Aeneas, death, door, Jupiter, heaven, woods, Cocytus, River Styx, Stygian, Hades, Tartarus, voyage, journey, love, madness, god, gods
Mormo nudges Moros shoulder hard,
chthonic behavior a bleak dance;
Cocytus is swollen with sad souls,
what direction do explosives flow?
Chthonic behavior a bleak dance,
it’s so easy to learn the steps to;
Be courageous, favor bold fortune!
Cocytus is swollen with sad souls,
Swim against this trend even alone,
capture optimistic moonlighting;
What direction do explosives flow?
Cerberus and Acanthodonto,
maybe the secret’s in their tension.
(A lone voice whispers)
Some Antenoraians
Pray
In uneven straight lines
With a new Caiphas
The dark priest
In the Lost City of Dis
In The Far East
For the world
To taste
A Malebolge sour kiss
The Sowers of Scandal
Living spiritually
By The Great Lake of Cocytus
The hidden gateway to a soulless Judecca
The dark wells of fire and ice
To their God
Who pays with gold
In the form of desire
Only to entrap those into sin
As the Great Battle
Continues
Into eternity
As angels
Of Light
Led by Michael
Slowly
Win
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Foundation of the piece.
No matter how dark it seems. There is always hope.