Poem: Ghoul’s Haunting

The Mother

The weary morning, like a beaten slave
who has no other hope besides the grave,
begrudgingly passed on from dawn to day,
bearing the summer’s foul, baroque display:
’twas here a patch of daisies blithely grinned
and sent their sweet aroma on the wind,
’twas there a worthless creek gurgled with pride,
a loathsome sound no one could long abide,
and did the sun not make the horrid dew
arise like mist and wash the earth anew?
Conspiracy of nature to ignore
the tragedy that rent us to our core.
How sick all beauty seemed, how ill, how mean;  
how hard to see blue skies and fields of green—
and why should not the world be made to mourn
and why not all of nature lie forlorn,
when yesternight a demon stole from me
the baby I had bounced upon my knee.

The Father

The flames of hell ablaze within my breast,
the shrieks of madness bound inside my chest,
this bitter strength consuming my whole soul
lent me the force to here fulfill this role
of vengeful knight ready to slay the fiend
which robbed me of a child not yet weaned.
The pounding hooves, like drums calling for war,
the baying hounds, how like a lion’s roar,
and all the world was red within my sight,
no green nor blue but only crimson light,
so then I flew, half mad, not knowing time—
until I’d searched the end of this foul crime.
We came asudden on closed iron gate,
and looked upon all man’s so dreaded fate:
A field of stones, the markers of the dead,
and this was where the ghoul’s dread trail had led.