Necromancers

Nightfall inexorably unfurls an odious shroud, upon this All Hallows' Eve

Eliciting the dead into metamorphosing, by demonised spells we weave

Chthonic wraiths arise from barrows, with our necromancer's shibboleth

Rousing themselves from our mythologies and their residence, of death

Our dark prayers are answered as our bonfires, like pyres, are inflamed

Macabre revenants are reanimating, from where nothing's ever reigned

And see how their shadows are cast, as they choose to walk among us

Necronauts of the netherworld arise, from our spells of unholy numbers

Corpses once, now transcend from an abyss, to reveal what lies ahead

Eldritch conjurations, untethered from a pit, where life has finally ebbed

Reciting incantations, we'll allure the burial shades of those forever lost

Saint Death guiding us, to night, where the burning bridges are crossed

 

Dead Man's Fingers

Down in a moonlit Cornish cove the Dutchman's crew were washed ashore

Ethereal figures from a creeping sea mist, seeking trove from a man-o'-war

And stealthily they climbed the cliffs, on the way to a distiller's lair in St Ives

Drifting spice laced spirits were there, to claim the dark souls of others lives

Mariners hid away, in the local inns, some relaxed in houses and the Shack

All supped, from a dead man's skull, under flags of the white cross on black

None the wiser were they, as an ominous shroud crept in from a rocky knoll

'twas ne'er their fate to fight, as the phantoms arrived for their Cornish Soul

Sea mist entombed the town with the smell of fear, death breath and spices

Finding what it needed, with its skeleton crew plundering, within dire guises

In the opaque haunting hours, of an autumn night, neath a lighthouse beam

Nothing living moved, as the sea mist took the spoils, with the dead unseen

Gravediggers dug the dirt, but on breezy days, they could smell spiced rum

Every body they buried, warmed their Cornish Souls, from ice cold to numb

Rain purged the mists, but they still heard the Dutchman's creaking timbers

So St Ives eyes scoured the sea, for a flag hoisted by a dead man's fingers

 

To The Corn Wraith's Lair

There's a path, that's forever carved, through the unyielding corn

Offering a way, of dead ahead, along which I'm inexorably drawn

Through the undulating crop it leads me astray, of that I'm aware

Hewn by those of the passed, like a track to the corn wraith's lair

Every advancing step that I take, is seemingly, on sun baked soil

Crumbling underfoot, like the very earth itself is implicitly disloyal

Onwards and upwards, or down, always below a raven on a wire

Relentlessly myopic I reach the same nadir, then forty feet higher

Nothing but the corn appears real, not even my presence of mind

With a sense that I am following, but they're following and behind

Rationality's my delusion, or maybe my sanity has been repealed

As I can't remember where I'm going, or a time I entered the field

I don't know what I was, I don't even know if I was a sentient man

Tilling this sour soil, up to the dusk, or just when mourning began

Humanity, I sense, still lingers though, but as baneful as a drowth

Someone (I knew?), cut off my eyelids and stitched up my mouth

Lucidity excludes me, but now I'm accompanied through the crop

As an otherworld whispering wind, sighs, like a sickles bloody lop

I'm sure I'm close now, I think, but all my thoughts are non-verbal

Raven eyes are biding my time though, for it's a loop, not a circle

 

Six Hills Lane

Spring's low setting sun, sinks into an impenetrable opaque haze

In a trice the road, that was directly ahead, enters another phase

Xanthic smog hoodwinks the unwary, as if it's smoke and mirrors

Hiding a sham diversion, to where only the phantoms are figures

Itinerants who passed this way, were led astray on Six Hills Lane

Leaving naught behind, but their recycled time, in a circling chain

Lost forever, those who perished, upon the salt-way to the Fosse

Still try in vain, to journey to the other-side, but they cannot cross

Left to drift, they're forever alone on a Roman road, in a fires pall

As they relive to die again, without a prescient reference to recall

Now they're the nebulous spectres cast away, like a trail's vapour

Eternally trying to reach the wolds, on the far side of Twenty Acre

 

Woodlands Way

Waning daylight fast fades to grey, upon this windswept moor

Obscuring what lies ahead, through a pine forest, below a tor

Ominous thoughts may be alert and even find time to ponder

Dusk is settling though and the path leads beyond, to yonder

Lichen's sprawled from tripping roots, to embracing branches

As a lost soul wanders in spent needles, falling in avalanches

Nothing's alive in the rotting petrified wood, of crystallized sap

Death only lingers here, as it always does, in an illusion's trap

Someone's ensnared and they'll not escape, it's insanity's toil

Within this dark domain they'll desiccate, as they feed the soil

And for anyone lost on the other-side, beware the fading grey

Yet if they choose the path ahead, it's just the woodlands way

 

Acid Bath

Alas there's a dire dream you cannot escape, or forbear

Control as an oneironaut would, or even purge the mare

In this state of terror, you'll never awake, if you succumb

Drowning in the caustic reverie until you're lifeless numb

Balefully your throes may endure, as you lose your mind

As the demon that has found you, becomes well defined

The fire will burn, but without a flame, there is only wrath

Hideously devouring you in the depravity of an acid bath

 

Scaring Crows

Sackcloth sentinel, seemingly sequestered to a loam of wiccan throes

Cruciform posing as an effigy, your presence is beyond scaring crows

And those who impaled you, nailed you, to a cross of crumbling wood

Rooted in the crop, your petrified face hidden beneath a rippling hood

In the shimmering distance they're all around you, all the buzzing flies

Nefarious creatures, laying their eggs for maggots in your empty eyes

Gagging putrefaction's caught and wisped on a breeze and fills the air

Causing all the ravenous birds of a feather, to flee and feed elsewhere

Rotting occultists oblation, you were once upon a time, a man of straw

Often heard in many ominous nightmares and of what's passed before

Whispering in weird incomprehensible tortured tongues, as if to repent

Staving off those who gorge in a frenzy, with a scarecrow's last lament