Artwork © Robert Fleming

 

In the corpse-Moon of Halloween

In the corpse-moon of Halloween, when the veil-line was breaking,
All the tombs of the USA heard the dark heavens waking.
Through the arteries vast of the continent wandered revenants hollow,
With antlers of midnight and eyes no star dared to follow.
From the cloud-vaults descended pale kingdoms of spectres unnumbered,
Who fed on the dreams that the centuries buried and cumbered.
By the rivers of shadow walked scarecrows impossibly weeping,
While beneath them dead empires awoke from their cavernous sleeping.
Through the pumpkin-black fields drifted angels with faces erased,
Leaving glyphs made of blood where the world had been blistered and traced.

In the grave-fog there opened enormous and ulcerous gateways,
And unholy processions came crawling from death-haunted byways.
Through the bones of the mountains moved dragons of thunderless fire,
Whose breathing transformed every prayer into funeral pyre.
By the cities there gathered vast harvest-gods fashioned from anguish,
Teaching multitudes ancient necromancies never to languish.
From the steeples flew flocks of black seraphim stitched out of sorrow,
Who had feasted on suns and would feast upon moons on the morrow.
Through the streets crept the Horsemen with lanterns of skull-flame aglow,
And their hoofbeats made graveyards bloom endlessly out of the snow.

In the halls of the republic sat shadows more ancient than Satan,
Reading books bound with skins torn from nightmares primordial and battened.
Through the chambers drifted widows of stars long extinguished,
Whose voices made all living languages wither, relinquished.
By the monuments towered colossal skull-palaces grinning,
Filled with choirs of lost souls eternally chanting and thinning.
From the heavens hung spiders the size of cathedrals of mourning,
Spinning webs from the screams of unborn and forgotten dawning.
Through the Halloween darkness sailed oceans of ghost-light and plague,
Bearing kings made of worms from a long-buried sepulchral age.

In the last blackened hour when October lay dying in cinders,
All the heavens unfastened their thousand abominable hinges.
Through the corpse of the nation rose leviathans ancient and eyeless,
With crowns forged of gravestones and hungers insatiable, tireless.
By the forests stood reapers with constellations for faces,
Counting centuries lost in the void’s never-ending embraces.
From the damp of the dells came the laughter of nameless things breeding,
In caverns where darkness itself had learned appetite feeding.
Through the pumpkin-red night burned infernos no rainfall could smother,
And the dead claimed the USA’s ghost as their kingdom forever and further.

 

Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.

Robert Fleming is a digital artist and visual poet from Lewes, DE. His books are White Noir, an Amazon best seller and Con-Way in 4 in 1 #4. Founding/contributing editor of Old Scratch Press and editor of Instant Noodles.