I've been sitting on the majority of this one for a while, with plans to polish it up and post it on Halloween. I could go into details about the best-laid plans and all that, but suffice to say it simply got away from me. Running with a three-year-old and trying to get in at least one traditional Halloween movie made sure that I was late, as usual!
This one was a great exercise for me, as I truly enjoy letting the Poe side out. I also completed this work in iambic pentameter, to mimic the beating of a frightened human heart. To read it appropriately, each line should come faster than the last. (For an understanding of iambic pentameter, check here)
Terror awakens a different dimension of the human mind, and I always feel more alive after allowing those creative juices to flow. Enjoy!
Nightmare
Macabre
Awake
in the night, sleep usurped by fear
A
short ride is needed, myself I tell
Cannot
shake realism, nightmare’s cold grasp
Buried
alive in an eternal hell
Feeling
so foolish, held awake by fear
Yet
a feeling that cannot be pushed back
Is
that a leering face in the corner
Awaiting
my approach for an attack?
“A
drive it will be,” I say to myself
In
the vain hope that this feeling might pass
Yet
that fathomless terror comes back now
When
the monster looks back through smoky glass
I
exit home, make my way to the truck
Am
I caught in some nefarious game?
Candle
burns in the house across the road
Home
abandoned, yet light burns all the same
I
pull from the drive and start down the road
Not
sure where to go, but sure that I should
Bloodied
teddy is gripped in the hands of
A
little girl who stands alone at the woods
She
smiles and waves as I drive by her tree
Rotting
flesh is flaking from her cold hand
I
press the gas as my heart starts to pound
Is
it madness that has taken this land?
A
light rain falls as my journey begins
High
overhead, the moon rots from the sky
Birds
fly backward as they return to nest
Where
fell offspring feed on men as they die
The
steady drizzle becomes a downpour
Then
the downpour becomes terrible flood
Windshield
is spattered with warm viscera
As
the rain from the dark sky turns to blood
As
I drive I’m haunted by dark whispers
And
tales that men are nothing more than meat
I’m
told these grim truths by a bloody fiend
A
demon who sits in passenger seat
I
turn back to home, for night is too dark
And
the nightmares are escape from new real
The
world has become too gruesome and grim
And
the moon rises once more over hill
As
night resets I return to my bed
There
I will hide from the phantoms that stalk
Then
the shadows detach from their objects
And
to my fear-wracked form they start to walk
A
fathomless terror besets me then
And
the feeling becomes thicker than air
I
hear a terrified voice, screaming, near
When
I turn then to look, no one is there
I’m
left with little sanity to tell
From
the dreams dreamed, and the horrors I sight
And
the dark shadow creatures come closer
As
the thirteenth chime sounds at black midnight
And
now as their prey I’m left to wonder
Considering
dark places that I’ve flown
Can
I ever return to sanity
After
the depths of madness that I’ve known?
“This is still just a dream!” some voice tells me
But
I realize as the shadow-things creep
That
the dream my mind formed was a falsehood
And
my tortured self was never asleep.
Randall Madden
November 4, 2014
