How sweet it is to deep into the night
   Let percolate your dreams in dripping beads
Of glowingly inebriate delight
   Distilled from gurgling rills of amber meads,
And then in threads of starlight finely spun—  
   All witched by frozen moonlight, pitched in black—
Suspend your limbs (made heavy by the run
   Of daily cares), and lay relaxed and slack
Till, saturate with drowsiness, and high
   Within a space of jewels and gems and jet,
You fall into the black hole's empty eye,
   And all the world and all yourself forget.
How sweet it is to all your life forsake,
Forgetting you had ever been awake.

O.O

A banshee once went on a date—
A dinner.  It wasn't so great:
   She started to cry
   Right across from the guy,
Who then choked and fell dead on his plate.

O.O

"No, no, go not to Lethe..."
                —John Keats

Ignore them, though they call you,—all the pills
   And liquor teasing playfully from the drawer,—
The leather belt, half on the chair, that spills
   Into a single loop onto the floor;
Fashion no crown of thorns with poisoned darts;
   And let the vulture fly an aimless flight
      That sees him make in vain each listless sweep
Till he forsakes his stalking and departs;
   For soon you'll blink into a dreamless night,
      And sleep Endymion's never-waking sleep.

O.O

Enfleshed and skinned and stuffed with juicy giblets:
A future worm's-meal of steaks and chops and riblets.

O.O

I whistle a tune
At nighttime's noon
   In a minor key
To call my bat
And little black cat
   To eat with me.

My spider spins with thinnest thread
      Her web of lace
   To capture her meal: your head
         And face.

O.O

One autumn day in Providence
   I opened up a door,
And entered into a stuffy room
   Called "Edgar's Nevermore",

A curio shop with things forbidden,
   And things bizarre and perverse,
And obelisks of ancient books
   Occult, arcane, and diverse.

I poked around the pint-sized potions,
   Inspected a petrified eft,
But made no purchase; and empty handed
   The merchant's lair I left.

Returning home, to my surprise,
   Like one who'd broken the law,
I found I'd taken a good unpaid for:
   A little monkey's paw.

It tightly gripped, with fingers curled,
   A flap of baggy sleeve;
And there it stayed, upon my jacket,
   When I hung it up at eve.

For many days it didn't move,
   And seemed the perfect pet;
But never trust a monkey's paw,
   Or this is what you'll get:

I went to bed a drunken evening,
   And slept as though I were dead;
And I didn't hear the monkey's paw
   As it crept beside my bed,

The monkey's paw that had bided its time,
   And waited, still as could be,
To choose this night to strangle it—
   My voodoo doll of me!

(Why did I have a voodoo doll
   Of me, you ask? Well, I...
Well, let's just say...well...I can't tell you...
   I'd blush to tell you why...)

I awoke (with bleary, blurry vision)
   To the monkey-****** grip,
Then died without a single curse
   To swear upon my lip.

And in my town I'm still remembered
   As that quintessential loner
Who died alone with a mangled throat,
   A creepy doll...and a *****.

O.O

.
   I keep an imp:
   It dangles limp,
And sleeps away its time,
   Only arousing
   To go out carousing,
Painting the town with slime.

O.O