POETRY BY WILLIAM BOVE

William Bove currently lives in St. Charles, Missouri. He has a life-long love affair with gothic horror romance that started at the age of six after reading The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. He remembers being spellbound and filled with wonder by Poe’s style of symbolism, allegory, and illustration. His soul sprang to life with the knowledge of who he was and what he was meant to do with his life and he has followed the feeling and voice ever since.

He feels there is a writing renaissance that rejuvenates the gothic romantic period: a resurgence in vampires and other vintage horror subjects. William feels that his writings are a celebration of this renaissance.

GOTHIC ROMANTICISM

A cemetery is a
fertile landscape
of inspiration for
the spirit
its silence
its stillness
attracts the senses
Freeing the soul
to wander in the wonderment
of imagination
Its aesthetic instills
in the blood
a rejuvenation of
creative expression
In the presence of death
I author a new genre of
living

RESURRECTIONIST

Don’t pester the dead
looking for gold
To go looking in a graveyard
is foolish and quite bold
For the dead hides no
riches for the greedy
to seek
Only a surprise in a
coffin to make the
most fearless soul shriek
Hidden away in the
dark and the gloom
awaits a hairy creature
who may take your life
all too soon
A quick bite to fill you
blood with poison and gore
will bring friends and family
mourning at your door
So if you go to the cemetery
in search of buried treasure
You may find yourself
six feet under
And your grave the next prospect of plunder

CHOIR OF THE GRAVE

All gathered in black
and dressed in dread
murmuring in strange
chants of the grave
Cemetery prayers filling
the hall
each ghostly echo
nourishment for the
soul
All joined in mass becoming
one great cacophonous
hymn to the macabre
bursting free
to haunt the land
Filing each soul with
dreams of horror
A warning to the living
stay away

I WOULDN’T DO THAT

Never touch a corpse
or you may come away
sick
Your lungs fill with
horror
and the death grows
quite thick
Aging quickly and
cold
A life brought to
the brink
You reach out a hand
for comfort and love
But you find your hand
greeted
By a mourner’s glove
In a box
In the ground
for your final rest
I warned you not to shake the
hand of a graveyard guest