"amontillado" poems
I wanna have lunch with Poe,
at Burger King,
because I'm sure he would appreciate how ghoulish that King in their commercial is
I don't want him to recite verse
while we fill our medium cups with corn syrup nectar--a giant leap
down from laudanum
I do want to ask about the Cask of Amontillado and being walled in slowly, for eternity
for to me that is creepier than all the crimson cream in the Masque of the Red Death
I want to know if he likes the fries--will he dare to dip them in scarlet paste we call catsup
mostly I want to know if he remembers the alley where he was found,
not yet a legend, consumed by consumption and delirium in equal measure
and if there were rodents privileged to hear his last whispered words--or even a gasp
I am buying, Ed, so grab that Whopper with both bony paws and tell me terrible tales, evermore
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 7:40 PM UTC
If you get it, you lost it.
I am here
(On this platform it is evident for your reading now)
I express myself
(Heads scratching, wondering what and how?)
I share pieces of me
(A defragmented glimpse of an experience deemed ‘worthwhile')
Callous, sensuality?
(Or a traitor in sheep cosplay?)
A dead-end hi-way?
Or this pawn from yesterday?
Here, your final say
This family we never asked
Amontillado without it's cask
Dry and cheery
Heart’s are bleary
We own this laborious task
My sins are scrollable, thumbed in haste,
Wrapped in ribbons of curated taste.
A gallery of masks, all timed just right,
My shadow dances in the ring light.
What of shame when shame gets likes?
What of thought when thought’s in spikes?
I weep in drafts, but post a grin—
The world won’t wait for the shape I’m in.
So brand the bruise, then sell the hue:
A wellness tip in sponsored blue.
This self I host in feedback’s cage—
A pet, a post, a digital page.
I bare my soul (or just its shell).
You’ll never know. I sell it well.
I logged on seeking something undefined,
A tether, maybe—some reciprocal ache.
But all I found were mirrors misaligned,
Each smile too wide, each word opaque.
The comments pile like leaves, not read.
Applause from ghosts, replies from ghosts.
I feed the feed, it feeds instead—
A hunger that consumes its hosts.
I draft a truth. I dress it twice.
Add polish. Then delete.
I write in blood, convert to nice,
Make trauma fit a beat.
No lesson left. No higher shelf.
Just one more version of myself.
Jun 10, 2025
Jun 10, 2025 at 10:16 PM UTC
Fortunato, I am called.
My friends rate me a connoisseur.
Tonight I wear a jester’s garb
for the feast day of misrule.
Tonight is fine, the wine flows free
With honeyed sweetness on my lips
My headgear rings with happiness
as I enjoy another sip..
Montresor came to speak with me
He wore a mask and monkish gown.
I shook the hand he offered me.
We spoke about a cask of wine.
A cask of sherry, dark and sweet
Amontillado- so he claimed
My friend had paid a premium.
Wished me to judge and share his gain.
He thought he’d ask Luchresi’s help
But that man is no judge of wine.
Give him grape juice in a cup
And Luchresi would exclaim “How fine”
I took his arm and off we went,
Not knowing how this night would end.
I went quite willing to my doom
with this fiend I thought a friend.
Montressor’s servants were away
Leaving he and I alone
He poured for me a warming glass
then led me to the catacombs.
We sampled others of his wines
to keep the cold and damp away.
I coughed and could not catch my breath.
But from my goal could not be swayed.
In the darkness of the tombs
Among Montressor’s ancestral bones
He victimized my drunkenness
I found myself chained to the stones.
I quickly learned it was no jest
I screamed in vain- none heard my cry
As he with brick and mortar built
this prison tomb where I will die..
Dec 2, 2011
Dec 2, 2011 at 9:05 PM UTC
The owl and the pussycat went on the randan*.
The boat was in dock for repairs.
Roller skates borrowed from friends of the Sandman
Proved helpful, but not on the stairs.
The Sandman was eager to help with the journey
The Ferryman told to watch out
The feline and strigidae rolled on the jetty
With meat pies and plenty of stout.
On boarding the ferry they found some dry sherry.
An Amontillado from Spain.
The owl soon felt woozy, all seasick and *****
The cat tried avoiding the rain.
At the end of the trip the two friends would quip
That the pies were amazingly nice
The filling consisted of mustard and biscuit
That compliments meat from blind mice.
Despite witty banter and skills of a chanter
The sun was elusive and grey
Twas then they decided to be less misguided
They’ll book all inclusive one day.
*Scots for party/merriment/thedancin’
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 7:34 AM UTC
Who am I?
And who are you?
And how did it end up
Just us two?
*Why you are you,
And I am me,
And it seems like this
'Tis but a dream.*
So tell me then,
O wise Supreme
If 'tis but a dream,
Then where are we?
*Well, don't ask me,
I am not the maker.
'Tis your dream sir,
And you are Its creator.*
Well certainly if
That was true,
I'd at least pick someone more
Knowing than you.
*Oh sir, you jest!
You comical fellow
But can you make sense
of what you don't know?*
Oh, you talk nonsense,
An amicable Fortunato!
Just tell me where the devil
We are stowed?
*Ahh, yes perhaps my lips would be more willing
With a bottle of Amontillado, yes.
To be blunt with you sir,
We are simply dead.*
Simply dead, are you mad?
That can't possibly be right!
Fie! Fie! I can't think,
What a ****** night!
****** night indeed my fellow man
For you stumbled out the tavern
And into my hands.
'Tis alright good fellow, no fretting now,
For 'tis almost time, any moment now.*
Time, sir?
What could you possibly mean?
Time for what?
Time for whom.
What the devil do you mean?
*Aye sir, you know very well
That time is a valuable thing,
And it seems*
It seems?
That your time has tinged.
Tinged?
Indeed.
But you said 'tis a dream!
*Indeed, I did, and what a pity
It has become, 'tis but a dream
You will never wake up from.*
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
Let my past be published now,
I care for it no longer;
Look between my righteous things
To see I was the wronger.
Gather all the worries
I'd fret about in winter;
Shove them off the highest cliff,
Make them crack and splinter.
Traipsing in the gardenside,
Dancing in the hollow;
Feeling for a mason's nook,
Sweet Amontillado.
Down within the castle walls,
Down among the relics;
Bearded faces line the halls,
Lilting in Goidelic.
Slowing pace to stop and smell
Of a strange antiquity;
Thinking on a silver day
That happened once in Brittany.
Countrymen with muskets bared,
Bent on fiery shot,
Pounced upon the zealous rogues
Of Napoleonic lot.
Wand'ring mind, drop your guard,
Stop your nagging ways;
Hark! the drap'ry's bold aura
Welcomes warmer days.
Happiness is fleeting,
Sadness is extinct,
So let my every passing thought
Be mindful and succinct.
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 1:06 PM UTC
you are my Brutus and I love
you more with each blade you slice into
me
23 stab wounds later and I am
made of wax
no longer bleeding or beating but
approaching thermosomatic phase transition when you
burn me alive
strike a match on my cheek light
a cigarette stub it out
my torso your ashtray, my heart a candle
lit vigil
burning low to ignite your frozen ire
I love you classical I love you Brutal I love you Antony
asleep in my tomb I love you buried under
municipal concrete I love you Amontillado I love you simultaneously
Héloïse and Abélard
I love you Delilah and I love you
you
let me count the ways
a six-sided die comes up 23
but my chest is already split open and you forgot
to feed the dog
give me public indecency and walk away
it's not your job to fix every schmuck who comes along
with a missing heart on your
beat
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 1:35 PM UTC
He slipped on a set of headphones,
Adjusted a dial or two,
Then introduced his radio show
And the members of his crew,
‘The Horror Tales of the Greats’ he read
Each week to the folk in town,
Just as the Moon was coming up
With the sun then truly down.
And the folk had huddled round speakers
To hear, in a thousand homes,
The tales of Edgar Allan Poe
In the speaker’s crackling tones,
And an eerie mist fell over the town
If they chanced to look outside,
As the ghosts of horror stories past
Rose up from the place they died.
Each tone was sent with a shiver
From the night’s Plutonian shore,
Just as that stately bird of old
Had repeated, ‘Nevermore!’
While the cats had yowled in the alleyways
When he read a tale of sin,
Of walling up the corpse of his wife
When the Black Cat did him in.
The Fall of the House of Usher,
The Masque of the Red Death,
The tales built up in the atmosphere
And made them short of breath,
The Cask of Amontillado,
The Pendulum and the Pit,
Whatever the horror, and most intense
There was always more of it.
The stars that shone in the evening sky
Had gone, though the sky was clear
As the Moon had dropped down, over a hill
While the airwaves dripped with fear,
And the walls back there, in the studio
Were seeming to seep a flood,
As the speaker droned in the microphone
The studio filled with blood.
And suddenly then, a different voice
Was heard all over the town,
Rattling through their radio’s
And shouting the reader down.
‘Shutter your windows and lock your doors
Put children under the bed,
Hide yourselves right under the stairs
Or you may well end up dead!’
‘The very air that you breathe has been
Long saturated with dread,
Has filled your lungs with the ripe unclean
That came from somebody’s head.
The ghostly voice on your radio
That has whispered blood and gore,
Will drown tonight in the studio
So there won’t be any more.’
And right behind that terrible voice
There was choking sounds and screams,
Enough to curdle the very blood
And to give them nightmare dreams,
Then after a long, chilled silence of
The type that terror sates,
A voice said, ‘that was the final of
The Horror Tales of the Greats.’
David Lewis Paget
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC
I hear you calling from within these walls,
but I've spent forever
pawing,
clawing at the plaster to free you.
My hands overflow with expanding silence.
I cannot speak.
I lay with you night after night
separated by this wall of flesh that mimics my every breath
as you sing me to sleep with your haunting, your taunting melody.
Your
slowing
pulse
is the most maddening rhythm.
Your
fading
voice,
the saddest cadence.
I want to share your secrets with the world.
Send your voice on the wind.
Hammer your heartbeat into the ground.
Heard.
Felt.
I will carve out my name
With one of the finer points of life.
Jun 20, 2017
Jun 20, 2017 at 11:28 PM UTC
He recalls the details of the grand fair-
Dark Amontillado seeps in a bit.
Sure of his love’s bright light that’s waiting there.
He offers up to God a silent prayer-
If it is heard he will have to admit
he makes his way to his first ever fair.
He steps into a swell of steamy air
where half-truths and quick looks pull him to it.
Sure of his love’s bright light that’s waiting there.
The signs all point, but his mind is elsewhere.
What kind of ode praises the opposite?
He arrives at the ever-popular fair.
The whole town knows but he decides not to care.
He trusts the Snakes had nothing to omit.
Sure of his love’s bright light that’s waiting there.
She always hid but now wants to care.
Adieu chérie scrawled on the eyes; unfit
he waits at the gate of her past love’s affair.
He never truly looked for her there.
Dec 17, 2018
Dec 17, 2018 at 8:13 PM UTC