The March Editor's Pick Poet is John T. Carney
Please feel free to email John at: Jtimcarney@aol.com
AUNT AGATHA
The Winter-clad poplars carried their children,
The Leaves,
In their arms,
Escorting them to the grave,
As they marched in the howling breeze,
Limbs writhing in misery,
As they hurled them bodily amongst the nearby tombs,
Where they gathered,
Unburied and still; brown and shriveled,
Forgotten and alone.
So like that Winter grove,
We, too marched, in solemn procession,
As the thick leaves gathered round,
As if bearing witness to our sorrow,
As if to speak the truths of our souls by declaring,
See! We are here to testify to your sorrow.
For we have already departed from our mother Earth,
And have gone forth to join her in anguish.
Snow began to lightly fall,
And, somewhere, a mockingbird shrilly sang its piercing, tuneless song,
As Winter began Death’s slow seasonal concerto of remorse.
As the concert commenced,
The tombstones leaned, gray-faced, forward in their seats in the earth,
Intent on each rattling tone as it shrilly lept out of Winter’s throat.
The music cursed the air with the cacophony of the Wind,
And its incessant howling.
As the grave rite commenced,
We gathered closely round the coffin and waited.
And waited, still, long after the rite had completed.
Without, the leaves thickly fell upon the Winter ground,
As the snow began to pile into thick drifts amongst the tombs.
In the distance a slow baying began to arise in the chill air,
Then, more.
We wheeled the coffin of Aunt Agatha outside and waited,
Perhaps the prayers would work; perhaps not.
The coffin was suddenly thrust open in one violent burst,
As a snout-nosed beast bolted forth out of the velvet cloth within,
Bolting forward into the snow to flee through the poplars beyond into the heavy woods,
Where the heavily burdened poplars yet bore their children, the leaves, to the grave,
Uncertain of their own fate in this weary world,
Yet certain of Death’s renewal and its hideous cycle,
And, as the leaves fell,
Aunt Agatha rolled amongst them with blasphemed merriment,
Mocking Death and Life in one profane, instinctual act.
The trees looked on in horrified dismay as Death bared Her Jaws and bayed.
SACRIFICE
A dark, viscous liquid dripped from the rusted pipe,
Coarse and thick like bile,
Hitting the lichen-clad stone like rain drops;
Pattering in indistinct drops into pools of crimson.
I reached up to touch the slab above the altar,
My worn hands taking care not to disrupt the uneven flow of blood,
My scarred fingers not wishing to disturb Cthulhu’s yet unslaked thirst.
That’s when I realized it:
When my flesh came into contact with the wet stone above,
When my reeking skin,
Flushed with sweat and polluted liquid,
And dripping, still, with the blood of the fresh sacrifice,
Came upon the truth.
That’s when it finally dawned on me.
I had no arms.
Instead, long, green tentacles groped upward from my unwilling torso,
To greet the ever-flowing stream of blood issuing forth from the vent above the slab,
And, in my mind, a singular voice kept shrieking,
Drink! Drink! Child of Cthulhu! Drink!
Finally, drunk with blood,
I rose and staggered through the room’s only stone portal,
And shambled towards the nearby shore of Innsmouth,
To join the Sea God’s children in the churning depths,
As I writhed in the white-foamed waves,
An indistinct shape rushed forward to join me.
Though green-faced and tentacled,
I knew her.
Her blood was still fresh on my tongue,
Her life essence still invigorating my tingling flesh.
Yes, though transformed, I knew her.
She was my mother,
Come to join me in the foam,
Her wiry hair thrust up from her scalp,
Like Medusa’s own writhing serpents,
Their curse as fresh as ever,
Their poison just as deadly.
And, yet, I did not turn to stone.
That’s when my mother laughed,
Her wind-whipped hair writhing in the stormy breeze,
Like Medusa’s own.
THE VACATION HOME
It shambled and crept past the night-clad bedpost,
A green, dripping specter,
Shedding dead leaves and slime onto the oak floor,
In pools of rainwater,
Which still fell thickly outside in the Winter air.
And, as this shadow thickly limped towards the still-open door to the yard,
Dragging its heavy stumps of rotted feet beneath it,
That rain-washed portal suddenly thrust itself open,
With a beastly rush of wind,
And the thing was gone.
Abruptly, I awoke into the balmy summer air of the noonday light,
On the bench of the gazebo by the pond and looked around for my wife,
Who had decided to take an afternoon swim today while I took a quick nap.
Instead, I saw a green, motionless shape,
Floating lazily upon the surface of the water not far away.
It was her, but she wasn’t alone.
Something had a hold of her.
In a rush something jetted across the water and lurched through the thick reeds towards me,
A tall, green, ape-like thing that loped and shambled after me as I fled in horror,
Towards my car,
Fumbling for my keys as I raced across the heated earth.
I saw the thing loping down the gravel driveway after me,
With deathly energy and fury,
Dripping dead leaves and green pond water onto the horrified earth.
That’s when I truly awoke from my deep sleep,
To see my wife standing over my bed and inquiring,
Whether I wanted to go swimming in the pond with her.
“No,” I decided unwisely. “I think I better catch some sleep. I seem to be a little wired right now.
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.”
The truth was that I had dropped acid an hour before,
And something was clearly floating in the pond not far away,
With a green, staring shape beside it,
Glaring at me coldly in the horror of the noonday air,
With measured and grisly intent.
John T. Carney was born in San Francisco, CA on December 13, 1960 and has lived most of his life since then in the Bay Area. He graduated from Moreau High School in Hayward, CA in 1979 and from The University of Pacific in Stockton, CA in 1985. He has had some several poems published by the International Library of Poetry in their various poetry anthologies and has also been published in small college literary magazines. His favorite horror short story is The Red Lodge by H. Russell Wakefield. His favorite horror movie is The Shuttered Room, based on a horror story by H. P. Lovecraft.
He now has a book titled The Vampire Sonnets. It is a short novel combined with a brief book of sonnets on vampirism, and you can find it HERE.
Death Head Grin has published his serial horror short novel entitled The Cat People which appeared from December 2010 on through the following months. He also appeared in The Horror Zine’s November 2010 issue and their year-end anthology titled "Twice the Terror: THE HORROR ZINE" Volume 2.
John T. Carney's web site can be found HERE.
