My goal is to share a Cthulhu mythos themed poem each and every Monday until the end of March. After that, my focus will switch to another literary great. Look out for that announcement. Here is an edit of a previous reader favourite. Enjoy
"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons, even death may die."
H.P. Lovecraft
I awaken tossed in bracing foam,
Whose subtle fingers turn my stomach's walls.
I cling to what remains of distant home,
Her cradling bed. Her soft and silent halls.
I'm cast on driftwood, sure to meet an end
Soaked and drowning, lone upon this sea,
With sleep no haven, nightmares of descent
Down to some bleak island, ever drawing me.
Mercurial, the sun brings lasting pain,
A lasting thirst, and at last a distant gleam,
And with it distant hope I might be saved,
Or that some land had formed from all my dreams.
Long hours pass. I bob, I drift, I float.
That shore's salvation ever closing now,
The hand of madness loosed from 'round my throat,
I feel God's hands themselves direct my prow.
Though not a faithful man I must consent,
No other explanation crossed my thought,
For how the becalmed sea so smoothly sent
My sail-less vessel swiftly to its port.
I found the land, and found myself more lost.
Her beach a marsh, a slick and muddy mire,
Scattered with rocks and turgid, bulbous moss,
With a taste of pardon, but more of ash and fire.
Once filled, I walked, and found a dryer course
On which I might just find some better fare,
But all for naught, I found just a barren gorge,
And a sightless cave, more likely something's lair.
Fatigued, I slept beneath the careless sky,
And those unfamiliar stars regarded me,
But did not seem to care I clung to life,
Inconsequential as I seemed to be.
I woke at dawn in darkness, on my feet,
Deep in the black of a vast and hollow earth,
And as my eyes adjusted I could see,
The kind of terror only madness births.
The grisly vision of a mountain spilled
From an ocean void that did not care for man,
Whose foul appearance tore at mortal will,
And mocked the lie of all I think I am.
A writhing face of feelers, slick and foul,
It's body bulbous, tentacled and grand.
It saw me and my heart and pulled me down,
And made it so I could make to stand.
His name, her name, its name, and I awoke,
My bed, my room, my prison in this life.
I smell it still. The briny, awful choke
Of blackened water, masking hidden strife.
This world is done. It scarred my waking days,
And he sits, not live, not dead, but in between,
For those shores to rise, and the stars to light the way
To an end for which he sleeps, and waits and dreams.
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