Beatitude

Blesséd be the Night of Death
Blesséd too the gaping tomb
Now the lost son journeyeth
Homeward to his Mother's womb

Bounteous the Stygian vale
Sweet the draught from Lethe's bed
Beauteous thy cheek so pale
Gentil rest the newly dead

Sorrows no more shalt thou see
Nevermore thou'lt vainly pine
Blesséd more for thou dwell'st free
All Eternity is thine

First published in Pluto's Orchard, Issue No. 1, Spring 1997.
 
 

On Brocken

The cards are dealt, the runes are cast
There's no place left to hide
The Future bleeds into the Past
And Death walks by my side
Around my neck, my lover's hand
With fingers reaching low
Enrapts my heart with reprimand
While swinging to and fro
Graymalken stares into my Soul
Impelling me to tred
My way to Brocken's hallowed knoll
Where men invoke the dead
Up over black and jagged rocks
Bestrewn with human bone
Contorted corpses racked with pox
Decaying carcasses from stocks
Dead children oozing through their box
Befoul the wind against my face
'Til I would halt this frenzied race
To crawl beneath a stone --
What have I done to Thee, my love
What have I done to Thee?

First published in Penny Dreadful, Issue No. 2, Autumn 1996.
 
 

 
 

About the Author:

Michael Pendragon is the editor/publisher of Penny Dreadful: Tales & Poems of Fantastic Terror and Songs of Innocence.  His own tales & poems have been widely
published over the past 4 years -- over 450 of them in
150+ journals including Terror Tales, Enigmatic Tales,
Tales of the Grotesque & Arabesque, Nasty Piece of
Work, Mindmares, The Visionary Tongue, Morbid Curiosity, Edgar: digested verse, and many others.
Last year BJM Press published a chapbook of 10 of his tales entitled Nightscapes.