Gary William Crawford is our November 2009 Editor's Pick Poet
You can email Gary at gothicpt12@aol.com
BEGGED FOR DEATH
Reading that language was
like swallowing poison.
Its evil magic would bring
me closer to death.
The wizard who wrote
it was trying to make
my heart stop,
and I was afraid.
The hellish words were
written on the walls.
I knew they were about me.
They made me question myself
and believe in things
I dared not speak of.
He was cunning in his art,
knew that he could make
me perform such foul acts
that it froze my will,
and to refute him was death.
I did what he asked,
and that triumph was his pleasure.
I huddled in a corner
quivering as the words
traveled from the walls
to my skin.
He caressed each tattoo
with his serpentine tongue.
As he licked them, he read
this poem, engraved
with my own blood.
When he was done,
he beat me until
I begged for death.
Now I am his forever.
EARTH HAUNTINGS FROM THE PHANTOM WORLD
Sometimes we appear
to our loved ones on earth.
We take on different
shapes and qualities.
Yesterday I appeared to a friend
as a piece of music.
I am good at haunting.
For somebody I didn’t like
I appeared as drops of water
from a leaky faucet to drive them
To madness as they drove me
when I was alive.
No matter what they did,
they couldn’t stop the
faucet from leaking.
Sometimes we ghosts seek revenge.
At other times the societies
for the paranormal
have attempted to capture us.
But we are too smart.
So for a time we return
to a former life,
only to return home
to the onetime peace and safety
of the Phantom World.
EVERYTHING IS MELTING
The air is right for a storm here.
For decades there has been no rain
on this planet; but the purple foliage
contines to grow.
I went to see one of the professors
at the castle University of Oona
to ask him why things on the planet
still live even though there is no rain.
He said that everything
in the Phantom World
is already dead.
Then of course
I realized that am already dead.
I died millions of years ago.
At one time the planet was a wonderful place.
But I am afraid of the coming
storm, and I saw the high priests
gathering to say a mass to ward
It off.
It didn’t do any good.
The rain came and I noticed
that all the other phantoms
are beginning to melt.
Finally my hand writing this poem
is beginning to become pulpy
and insubstantial.
Even though I am dead,
I know that I can melt
and like the wicked witch
of Oz, I will melt
crying, “What a world! What a world!”
FAMILY
Everyone in the Phantom World is related.
The families are very large,
and they multiply at a frightening rate.
It is not through sex that they grow,
but from absorbing light rays
from the twin suns and the three
glowing moons through which
they take their sustenance.
In my former life I was an only child,
but I have a staggering number
of brothers and sisters
and mothers and fathers
and nephews and nieces
and aunts and uncles whom I know intimately.
I went to the professors
at the University of Oona
and asked them why this is so.
They said it is because
in the Phantom World
there is love everywhere.
This love is expressed by music
that is played in our heads.
Thus this planet has been for billions
of years a place of harmony
where we dream each other’s dreams
of joy and hope. For a time
we were whole.
THE GREEN SKY
The green sky is caving in on me.
There is nowhere to hide.
They know my attic room,
so that is no protection.
Soon the land will quake—
caused by the high priests
at the University of Oona.
The phantoms will continue
to go on, even though the land
will shake and the three moons
will lose their orbit and crash
into the planet, but there will be
no loss of life, for everyone
is already dead.
But they know I am different.
I came to the planet tainted
by my past life on earth,
and they know I drink
the nectar of illusion,
so I will not dream
all the phantoms’ dreams.
They don’t like difference.
I got drunk on the nectar and
ran away one night
in the month of Od,
took a secret passageway
beneath my attic room
that enabled me to go
to my former life on earth.
I outwitted them.
The poetry books of Gary William Crawford, The Shadow City and The Phantom World, have been on the final ballot for the Stoker award from the Horror Writers Association. Gary is the author of the poetry collections Poems of the Divided Self and In Shadow Lands, as well as the short story collections Gothic Fevers and Mysteries of Von Domarus. Gary is a scholar of Gothic literature and has published Robert Aickman: An Introduction, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio- Bibliography, and Ramsey Campbell. He has edited the journal Gothic and the poetry magazine Night Songs, and now he edits the free online journal Le Fanu Studies.
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