Oneirophobia

Ominous oneironauts lurk and arise from the deepest well

Nyctophilian creatures who are borne from the pits of Hell

Eclipsing the mysterious alternative twilight of inner space

In the consuming darkness, they're the wandering wraiths

Reveries fanciful rangers can twist dire dystopian dreams

Opening macabre subliminal portals of disturbing themes

Parasitic feeders, they'll wheedle in an unconscious mind

Haunting the paralysed dreamers in their terrors confined

Ogres, demons, or maybe the night hag, succubus whore

Bait to entrap the sleepers, within a hideous primeval lore

Irresistibly gorging on nightmares, they'll manifest into life

And slyly await the waking moment with a glistening knife

 

Silent Knight

Some said he was sent by Morpheus, as the craven waking wight

Imbedded in the nefarious nightmares, as an unholy Silent Knight

Lurking benignly, on the periphery, but it's merely his masquerade

Evoked to ensnare death's dreamers, onto his sabre's razor blade

Nyctophilian ranger renounced the light, to become forever errant

The righteous path's forsaken, for his malice is impiously inherent

Kindred spirits gather all around him, in the catacomb of nihilence

Night hags duping sleepers, as the waking wight haunts in silence

In a dark paralysis of fear, the dreamer's subconscious is derailed

Gouged through the soul, they'll rest in peace, on a blade impaled

Heinous demons, soon fade, to reveal the craven antipode of light

The creeper reaper borne in dreaming, the nefarious Silent Knight

 

Count To Three

Close your eyes below the hanging bough, of the old oak tree

Once the light has waned, take a moment, then count to three

Under the spell of the ancient wood and the rope scarred bark

Nothing unknown will follow you here, where the world is stark

The count has passed and what was lush, has turned to tinder

This once cyan sylvan will fade away, to be as bleak as winter

Orientate yourself, with naught to say, from your lolling tongue

Then face the raven, who's been your shadow, for far too long

Here there's a dirge of tautened creaking, from a hollow depth

Realising you have a need to breathe, but you have no breath

Every last second lost hasn't happened, but it's what might be

Enraptured by this reverie, close your eyes and count to three

 

3 Of A Number Between 5 & 7

I don't know why these demons lie

Yet I do know how my demons die

This mirror will witness my forefinger and thumb

As I splatter my brains by discharging this...

...gun

It was all a dream of my darkest matter

A nightmare, in which my brains I splatter!

'tis over now though and from a pillow I'll raise my head

But nothing happens, there's no way to wake, it's like I'm...

...dead

There's no higher place I'd call Heaven

There's just 3 of a number between 5 & 7

For I'm trapped in the dark of my demons' cell

To spend my eternal death in an unliving...

...Hell

 

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