Electrical Horror

Sufferance take credence from your dead doomed down low,
Such is the evil brood blood brother blankly staring.
The electric chair garish lit bright birthright sitting yawning hating
Lour endowed with wicked wiles to come and sit a while.
Spectacular electro horrorshow dunking a soul in molten acid,
Kill destiny dragged deadweight hang head decapitate
All penultimate penalty inflictions on flesh infected with taint,
Hainted by iniquity ubiquitous in ugly hearts rust broken.
Original sin grins our puddle black souls growls hungry
Monstrous squirm worms eat our insides out with pouting pucker mouths
Razor teeth our shame sheathed in taboo lockets buried in our live graves.
Bedraggled listless strange one note our policy:
Straggling struggling juggling logic of de facto laws will raze you,
So listen obedience obsequious sequence is law and order
Break them we break you with electrical horror.

Post Mortem Examination Results Are Inconclusive

Molten lead tears
Solidify in mascara
Spider paths track down the face

Hair twirled like vines
Descending the shoulders steps
To an unholy navel

Ashen blood
Frozen in Carpathian veins
Oozes from tubes
Into the bucket

The austere mortician
Scans the vacant face
And considers
Her greatest challenge

But the small town families
Joined at the wake
Gasp in horror, “What is it?”
Breathlessly
To a victrola stillness in the air

Myrmidon Echoes

Myrmidon echoes
Pierce the twilit atmosphere.
A copper tongue clicks.

Flash Retreat

Something with a saurian step
Leapt out of darkness and took your partner

And now you’re left with empty threats
Addressed to shadows and quiet echoes

Argus eyes would help you survive
Lithe predators who stalk behind your back

A chill augur traces your spine
Thermocline nerves prick ominous futures

And cold running smolders in toes
Exposed flesh tingles with numinous breaths

Something is following closely
Ozone and blood-scent assaulting the nose

Replete with Darkness

The shadow of a broken boardwalk
Woodwork in nacreous decay
Shut down
Abandoned
Violations deeper than accidental death

Streetlights throw a paltry glimmer
A semblance of uncaring charity
Licks at the end of a wound
Destined to slough off into the sea

Wind whistles a calliope screech
Through hallways of the haunted house
More grave than ever

Only the dismantled remains
Of the ferris wheel and merry-go-round
Stain the deck like rusty viscera
Uneaten by gulls

The silence an omission
Undercut by the chant of seas
Screech of an empty building
Steady moan of beams
Restless with truth

And truth sits in the corner
Wheezing slightly
Drawing fingernails along creeping flesh
Replete with darkness

The Beginning

Dread Sonnets and Other Grim Folly is a collection of atmospheric, horror poetry. There has not been a collection of poetry as serious and unsettling as Dread Sonnets, since the deaths of Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Poems from the collection will be published weekly on this blog, starting with the final poem and ending with the first. Discussion and comments are encouraged. Read on, and bring a friend. We could always use more down here.

Vincent Q. Wolfram