Rotten Quill

I remember that quill,
And the desiccated hand that led it,
Candles barely illuminating the dread at work,
Manipulated by the rotten hand of a poet,
Skeletal and rank fingers ushering the pens path,
Fetid flakes of flesh falling upon the page,

This ancient quill,
A veteran of many campaigns,
Wars of calligraphy and manuscripts,
Crafted from the feather of a long-extinct bird,
A yellowed shako worn atop,
This tool was marshal for the ink spot rank and file,

In this writing desk mortuary,
The musk of death runs deep,
Poet and pen rotting together,
Twin tombstones upon a page,
Writing like this is a form of necromancy,
Horror creating beauty.

Boneyard

I see you,
Supplicants and sycophants all,
Under those predatory spires,
Within ivory gothic monsters,
A church of destruction,

Did you know you stand on sacred land?
Not of the biblical kind,
But a boneyard,
As you kneel at your oaken pews,
You stand upon graves too,

This institution buried these bodies,
It ate them body and soul,
A temple of killers,
Justified by voices in your head and from the pulpit,
An ecclesiastical superiority complex,

You stand upon corpses,
You pray,
Looking up to ghosts of gods in the sky,
Prostrating yourselves to an absent father,
The rays in the clouds are just radiation,

Each skeleton is a sin,
Committed by the alleged unprofane.

Grave Guard

Under a corpse-fire moon,
In this gravestone hamlet,
I stand guard,
Ever vigilant,
Billhook clasped in putrid claws,
Eye sockets scanning for graverobbers,
I know not why,
My senses rotted many lifetimes ago,

Outside a mausoleum with a faded name,
I too have no name,
A puppet on undertaker strings,
Raised for one purpose,
A corpse amended as an abominable statue,
I am to simply guard this place,
Until the red sky wakes,
And these bones are finally consumed.

Flutes At Night

From my silken casket,
I am dragged to cognizance,
By painful aural hooks,
The night pierced by an unseen cacophony,
An orchestral banshee wail on the lawn,
Illuminated by a crescent in emerald hues,
Moonlight through a lens of wisps,

From my dusty window I spy a dread throng,
An assembly of ghouls,
Skeletons of the closet,
Bony fingers clasped on to instruments of every kind,
Shrieking stagnant air into flutes from lungs long rotten,
Guided by a softly groaning conductor,
Hollow cavities reading from songsheets comprised of past mistakes,

Their mournful tune sings dead memories into my mind,
And I can’t help but well up,
Their revenant of a chrous is anathema to my balance,
Brass and woodwind accuse in shrill tones,
Violins pinching at my arms with raucous timbre,
A melody that shan’t allow me to rest guiltless again,
And the flutes parade ever on.

Zombie

I stumble on,
I’m a necrotic husk,
I’m a zombie in a lab,
Hooked up to rancid drips,
Via barbs of mouse clicks,
Lurching around a connected world,

Dead eyes locked on to a screen,
Following a trough of media feed,
All thumbs and yellow smirks,
Opinions and threats zooming by,
My gaunt expression never shifts,
Wearily drooling,

Necromantic interaction,
Torn skin of shallow sheep,
Guts of private conversations,
Detritus of attention seeking,
Red chocolate of tribalism,
I’m a consumer of social flesh,

Am I addicted?
Is this addiction?
But I must eat to function,
I must consume to exist,
So is this addiction a necessity,
In this modern social world.

Necromancer

A frail old man lives upon a lost hill,
A spectre of a man,
A man with power over life and death,
He is the Necromancer,
A god over mortal flesh,
Warts and all.

A wave of the staff,
Rotting hands pulse skyward,
A chanted incantation,
Banshees shriek in the black,
A flourish of the hand,
Maggots surge from pus-filled corpses.

A sacrificial blade drips crimson,
Coffins and crypts are clawed open,
A forbidden ritual,
Bones rattle as if sentient,
A dark grin,
The dead horde begins its carnival march.

A twisted mind once filled with thoughts of family,
His rancid creations are a hollow replacement,
Their eyes no longer see,
Their minds no longer reason,
Their hearts no longer beat,
And no longer love or feel.

King of Scythes

Stooped low upon a lofty throne,
A necromantic monarch,
Shrieks in fury,
Such undying hatred washes over his bones,
The azure moon calms him not one drop,
The living remain alive,
And the dead remain below.

With an incensed scream,
He calls upon his legions,
Rotting knights and fetid footmen,
Shadowy beasts and mad spirits,
Rusted iron and filthy nails,
Anguished moans and eerie corpse-lights,
Driven onward by their dead liege.

Compelled by a rage that never dies,
The dead legions advance,
Marching under the moon,
Fracturing defenses under the moon,
Slaughtering innocents under the moon,
The dead are now unrivaled,
And the living are no more.

A decomposing monarch has his victory,
The nefarious King of Scythes,
Do you hear him coming for you?

The Writing Dead

That thing there?
That fetid and putrid thing there?
That stinking sack of necrosis?
That rotting monstrosity?
That musty cadaverous creature?
That insult to the senses?
You want to know about it?

That’s one of the writing dead.
See how it feebly grips the quill,
Rotting hands writing reams of scripture,
In this sacred crypt-cum-factory,
Soul-less eyes barely keeping track.
We constructed this abominations from our dead,
As hopeless in death as in life.

You see them now?
Rows upon rows of scribbling cadavers,
At oaken desks built from coffins,
Rotting in harmony with one another,
Decomposing guts spilling to the floor,
Skin decaying and yellow,
Scratching parchment in concert.

What do they write?
Further death sentences of course!
A most unholy charge,
Perfect for these unholy beasts,
Devoid of mind and soul,
Bereft of emotion and morality,
Without hope or aspiration.

I hate this one in particular,
This disgusting shell of a life,
I loathe its dead adoring face,
I despise its silver locks,
I abhor its stunted form,
I knew it in life,
It once called me Father…