Invariably,
You prefer to come
To me in the dark.
"You're more my temperature then,"
You once said.
I'm not much of a thermometer,
But I am the eurythmy
To each syllable you give
In such settled shadow.
A play of murmurs and fingertips,
You once named this.
Always I see a wreath in your hair,
In colors of Persia,
Textures of night,
And the soft blended lines
Of you I know
Infallibly.

Vespertine, fatal dream
Mistress conjuring shapes of night
Seventeen little fiends
Elegy for a demon’s plight


Alone in my study, sitting
before a roaring fire
Visions so ******
they churn desire

With the dead of night
summoning hellish zest
They come to incinerate
my corrosive flesh

The hymns of *St. Lazarus beckon solace
from the cathedral outside
But I linger here in the bowels,
where my ancestral sins reside

Animistic stares gazing through
these dead-soul dreams
Where another horror story is not
always what it seems

Portraits of deceased queens
looked down at me with blackened eyes
Layers of muffled screams
festered while judging my vacant lies

Years before, my grandmother watched
over me as a boy in his bed;
Endless, ambiguous rhymes of prayer
are what she often said.

She promised to ban the spirits
that steadily linger
But dark twisting hands
outreached and took her

The monsters and invisible abominations
have always been here
Following my whereabouts,
watching me year after year

Subtle ghosts keeping my heart
and house cold
I sat and waited for what my
icy breath foretold

The dreams, the demons, the ghosts
all that severed me
From experiencing the love of flesh
I so forever longed to see


Came the hour the church bells rang and tolled


The dread of things to come
The moans and cries had begun

From lissome shadows and corridors
Like Charon beating souls with oars


Creeping evil fled
to the refuge of my home
To reap the sins
that my family had sewn

The rippling, screeching strings
of a malevolent orchestra
Scored and produced themes
worthy of infernal Sumatra

The flames in the fireplace
surged a green incendiary wall
From the hell mouth jaw emerged
a dark figure I saw.

Mother Mephistopheles,
            clad in silvery pieces with a pale face
            Manifesting atrocities, her emerald eyes
            welcoming our embrace

I backed away from the sights in,
my trance lost in her glimmer
But the noises and choir peaked
in a swarming fit for a sinner

In a gush of surrounding ash, Father Selaphiel materialized
The otherworld lovers reunited,
their bond revitalized.

“We come unto thee, Son of Faust, heir to Blake.”
They said in unison like a choral demon snake

“Create a fleshling worthy of a child, of many in one
So the deeds of your family’s sins can be undone.”

I stared at the figures with execrable bewilderment
Fearing my sanity had seeped through my temperament

They threaten my eternal existence with continued torment
A living anguish that would solidify my hell-bound descent

“What must be done?” I asked these surrogate advisers

And they instructed
A body made from flesh and metal
Of dead and living components
Blessed and cursed
From God and Satan
Men and creature
Using their collected powers
to merge with the night
I swept across the villages
and cities to obtain the materials
Now all these years, I’ve wondered
Why my medical expertise had been put to waste
“Did the demons prevent me?” I pondered
“Or did they aid me?” I concluded in my haste

Innocent or not, I claimed what I needed
To rid myself of the terrors deep-seated.

A steel-woven chest piece
and half-incinerated cadaver
Twenty feet of large intestines;
boys, girls didn’t matter

Shelled-out cranial cavity
with cerebral cortex to match
Mixing bladders and gallbladders
worth its catch

Punctured spleens and insolent creams
Circulatory, digestive, endocrine,

Iron bones, infused tendons mount
Smells and rancid odors spilling out

Guts, pus, worms and maggoty brains
Boiling in holy water with dried remains

Sacks of chain mail and velveteen potions
Seething concoctions conflate emotions

Patches of caustic skin made like adamant leather
Bolted with steel fingered brutally severed

Into gauntlet armor, this mechanized abomination
Personifying my sickened, wailing degradation

I showed Father and Mother my life’s work and creation
A flesh-iron shell waiting, they stood with appreciation

“Vespertine…” they called to the collage of my work
They petted its face while the shadows continued to lurk

Seventeen little fiends and creatures
appeared and surround
The moon shined through the glass
and the room around

The Seventeen shadow children became smoke and entered the monster
Now a being both ethereal and corporeal

My sins and demons locked in my own creation
Mother Mephistopheles and Father Selaphiel
Left Vespertine in my care

All that plagued me
All that haunted me

Personified, solidified
And barely alive.

My half-dead servant.

and Halloween child