Charnel Poems

Plight of the Wight

Never again to know fresh air,
Combing worms from my matted hair.
No one remains who’d ever care —
Tied to my grave, this lonesome baire.
I must escape the sun’s harsh glare,
Tread carefully down crumbling stair,
Descend into my crypt just there,
Where I sit alone in dark despair.
Upon my ancient worm-eaten chair,
Inside my vaulted charnel house lair,
Such a sad and accursed affair —
Never to rest, always aware.
This kind of death is so unfair:
No converse, no song, no whispered prayer.
A thousand lifetimes in disrepair,
Unattended, solus, solitaire.
Harshest sentence beyond compare,
Caught in this endless undeath snare.
Naught to do but eternity stare —
And comb the damn worms from my hair.

Spring's Abysmal Guile

Spring’s Abysmal Guile
By Sy Roth

A vapor rises, rank as the charnel pit,
a corruption of a miasma vast,
as though some sepulcher, long sealed,
split its stony jaws to breathe.
Vile exhalation of a corrupted world.  

The reveler, unwitting wretch
treads the decadent fields where verdure writhes,
each blade a hostile tendril, squamous, cold,
glistening with ichor 
No earthly fount its progenitor.

He deems the shade of evil vanquished,
trampled beneath his hobnailed boot. 
The soil heaves with malefic will,
its roots, like veins of some primordial fiend,
pulses with a rankness older than the stars,
a stench that whispers of aeons lost.

Spring cloaks itself in verdant pall,
no bloom, but scales of a vast, unuttered thing,
its thorns a raven’s beak, evermore to rend, to sow, to bespoil.

He quaffs the tainted zephyr,
proclaiming triumph over a gloaming moon, 
Swept in the season’s unseen talons,
fathomless ennui
creeps through his sinews,
entombing his soul in an abysmal cleft unshriven.

Nothing There

You left. I’m not full of anything but nothingness. 
It’s an interesting feeling, nothingness. It hurts so badly you’d think something was there. But when I check, it’s empty. There’s nothing there. 
I wept. My eyes burn like a thousand blazing suns, full of dust and grit that scrapes away my sclera until tears of blood drip red tracks down my cheeks.  
There was something there. 
No words. They erased my poetry the day you left. The words are forgotten and tasteless on my tongue. I lit a candle and seared my flesh to burn away any trace of myself, like a thousand blades tracing red lines into my skin. Was something here?
No songs. You took my voice with you beyond the veil of human sight. The phantom whispers will forever echo into the speechless abyss of my mind. Feeble scratches into my frail human papyrus, a promise never to be fulfilled. Were you ever here? 
I’m empty. An emptiness so full of hate and pain and grief that I will never again be filled. It soaked into the lining of my chest cavity until every breath I take is drowning, seeped in sorrowing despair. The vivid imagery of a charnel house in human flesh. Death is here.

Autumn Is For Dead Poets

Trees turn their features inward.
Cool winds
wander in like stray cats.

A fiery death is in the air.
the party colors
are flame and ash.

Leafy campfires
burn the residue of mammoth bones
long since devolved
into the soot of charred mice.

Autumn is the charnel season,
its love is cruel, its farewells
a promise of relentless demise.

Dead poets scrimshaw its beauty
on last year’s death masks,
mice-tusks root up the sun
to warm the naked spaces.

Mausoleum Man

Oh longest time it seems yiv dreamt, me Mausoleum Man,
Coffed in Mummy's charnel home stove 'round your stonewings' span.

You Monk brod in yar bunkous cell, 'tween sellow stone sainwalls,
All hued in Olden Woldic green by lichen spattered greenfalls.

You Embalm-ee bequested: just unnatural light for me;
So acid lamps cast all he's shades and the flotsome seeds of 'is swampless trees.

'Fore Lindo it seems he writ naivic skrit, entranslatid his laundrous floor;
But en wake of 'is ex-excavation, e'll read none of 'at the same, nevermore.

The Soft Centre

Looking inside the mirror

Rambling thoughts
Reflection in a window
Standing still
Frozen in time
Is this me?
Shall I not
Be anything
So many information.
Are my views
Mine
Or are other people’s
Opinions
Influencing me?
Is there charnel 
Inside
That sifts the many viewpoints.
Are nothing
My original thoughts.

Reformation

Black night,
         Await the solar charnel steeds,
         Await the noon,
         Await the blacker, richer dawn.
                 
         Pale heresy dispatched
         The light brings on
         Silver and subtle with deceits
         A day of error o'er a night of wrong.
                 
         Nor can the fainting heart resist
         The furtive promise of a Christian bliss
         And light's pale monuments uplift
         A pagan and a passionate kiss.

What Are the Roots That Clutch

yet the people rebelled against me
in the wilderness locusts and wild honey
he poured out his wrath on them
yet i did what would keep it
from profaned in the eyes
of the fighting nations
do not follow the idols of your ancestors
the sacred river flowing dirt
remnants of burnt carcass
yellow flowers merging with clotted blood
naked sanyasis dancing in the charnel ground
post mortem rituals ego transcending
tantric liturgy molding the mind and desposition
prayer beads, flower pujas ,yajna ,mortification
of the rotten flesh, summer solstice
esoteric dharmic traditions
archetypal liminality surface
chthonic dieties dragging
will you defile yourself
what are the roots that clutch
what branches grow out of serpents

Gott Mit Uns

lonely as a dried up hero
legend only to the past,
as a world moved on
from foolish children’s faith,
energy of generations
arrives at perigee,
blown out like flatulence
snuck into polite conversations,
snide groupthink on
a notion of good sport
and fair play,
while eyes and hands
itch to turn main street
into charnel houses,
the foolish ones
barking dulcet tunes
get frog marched to the wall,
can it even be,
anymore with visions dead,
above in a hawk eye
clear cold wind and azure sky,
high over every thing, everything
the squabble, the blood
the raging teeth,
godless empires and ideal,
the line of never ending human hearts
blazed away,
flaring like desert sun,
burning,
shining like moon rockets
over the sea of tears below,
the very world gives off a sickbed air,
damned
damn
damn
the creator for demanding
to know ourselves
before we know forgiveness,
of chemicals,
of realpolitik,
of biocentric theorem,
a life,
like this republic,
if we can keep it...
gott mit uns.

Charnel House

a clock strikes twelve - -
the old charnel house door
creaks open

for Tracie’s Scary Ku contest

Halloween Rispetto

Spiders spinning webs and broomsticks swooping low,
Wizards, warlocks, trolls and witches casting spells,
Ghosts and spirits float around, no place to go,
Dripping charnel houses, captives’ groans in cells,
Grinning Jack-o-Lantern, hanged men’s legs that kick,
Mummies, ghouls and bones, and smells to make you sick,
Toads and eyeballs dropped into the witches’ brew,
Zombies, vamps and werewolves plan to feed on you.

Jack Horne, 18th September, for Russell’s Ultimate Halloween contest

What Dreams Are Made Of

The land of sleep, a place where dreams are true,
Is full of goblins, witches, wizards, elves,
With fairies, dragons, giants, unicorns,
Enchanted castles, dungeons, lakes and woods.
From monsters swimming in the deepest seas,
To dripping charnel houses, spooks and ghosts,
They vanish when we open up our eyes,
Just like she leaves my arms.

For Kim’s What Dreams Are Made Of contest, 28th July

Ossuary

There high on an outcrop of sun bleached rock
A skull and bone house please no feign of shock

Resting a place following the charnel house of life 
Layered guests welcomed from past time be it husband or wife

No names all lost even an alias a Smith or Jones
Searching long enough I am sure to find my bones

Night Terror.

Night Terror.
You need no introduction.
Into my slumber,
With skulking cats eyes.

Now,
You build a charnel house.
Bricks and mortor, sinister.
Laying claim to my dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suffered terribly with night terrors at such a young age.
I feel they dictated my life for quite some time.
This is one of my more personal poems.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personification; please?
I dont know if there is currently a contest for personification poetry.
If not, I would love to see one set up.
Unfortunatly, i feel i do not have the capacity to run one myself... yet.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, Jamie.

(P.S. I am brand new to soup, as you most likely can tell.)

Galactic Gothic

The Age of Man
Is but a brief, abbreviated span
Of seconds ticking in a moment’s course.
Infinity: the final source
Is like a charnel house, with cypress tree
And yew and myrtle, growing in the graves of Space,
Where decomposes Time’s own face.

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