Poe sleeps in a shroud nightshirt,

head heavy against the prose.

laudunum seeps malevolence i

into sheets of blackened hell.

To dream is to suffer.

To awakenk, to die.

Moans weave despondent dirges

around his sleeping tongue,

Lachrymose echoes of

Lacerated thought.

The acrid taste of “nevermore”

drips lamentation down his throat.

To suffer is to dream.

To die, to awaken.

As vapors of nightmare

stain outline around his form,

night claims Poe’s body;

moonlight thieves his soul.

The Age of Victoria,

tatted in trepidation

elevates Poe’s abandonment

unravels bone into marrow..

A carriage of darkened dream

cradles Poe deep inside

to the edge of a cemetery

Iron-fenced in heavy metaphors.

Tombstones of canonized poets

toppled by amateur vandals

provoke the spectacle

into sacrilege and chaos.

Wrapped in self-loathing,

Poe dismounts from the dream,

kicking feckless bits of imagery,

rolling meter out the grave.

He is here to scavenge sonnets

rob sepulchres of rhyme

gut essence out of verse

loot catacombs of allegory

Poe embeds a shard of simile

inside his barren womb of work

gives birth to a stillborn concept

resuscitated by his words.

 

Copyright 2010