Once there was a mad Arabian poet,
he said,
who wrote a Book of Death
and an Unsettling Couplet
and inspired him
in the way that a car-wreck
may inspire a tattooist’s
gruesome designs.

O, the frightening things
that ran through his mind!
So unsettled was he,
so disturbed.
O, the way that they leered
at his table they dined!
So confused were his colleagues,
so perturbed.

God, the things that came creeping
in the early hours of dawn
when the town was asleep
and the moon was forlorn.
How he tossed in his sleep –
Was it sleep? was it real?
There were Things he did see
there were Things he did feel.

Lovecraft, Lovecraft –
my quiet recluse –
why are you so pale?
Pray tell. What phantom-horror
did you see in the night?
Why are you so blue?
Why do you shake? Are you
ill, are you sad, are you
broken in the mind?

But all of the doctors,
the scientists, the friends,
THEY COULD NOT REALISE
the horror, the nightmares,
the Things in the dark.

Escape through your head
through the blood-and-ink stained alleyways
within. Retire to your room
with a pen and an electric light.
Try as you might
not all of your stories with
their horror that some find unspeakable,
others disturbing –
THEY CANNOT EXPRESS
that pure form of fear
your mind feels at the idea
of the mad Arab’s couplet.

*That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons, even death may die.