In honour of the season, and inspired by some artist friends who were doing Inktober, Horrortober, and equivalents, I decided I'd give something similar a go and write 31 horror poems, then sling them together as my next chapbook (well, 25 or 31 horror poems, depending on whether you count a crown of sonnets as a single poem or several).

It's now available -- Horrors, Terrors, Errors: A Poetry Chapbook.



The poems vary in horror sub-genre, tone, and form (I even came up with a couple of new forms, because why not?). There's a zejel about cannibalism, a slasher rispetto, a quatern ghost story, a self-contained horror anthology in the form of a crown of sonnets, and various other things. Including this rondeau about a vampire...

The Vampire Drinks

The vampire drinks the blood of kings,
Amasses wealth his long life brings,
He savours throats his fangs have burst,
And golden goblets quench his thirst,
Reclining while fair Sappho sings.

His palace falls, marauders' slings,
For centuries the loss still stings,
Medieval plague-tinged blood is cursed;
The vampire drinks.

The sound of breaking bottles rings,
A tearing backpack holds his things,
He sleeps in alleys, fate reversed,
This smacked-up junkie blood's the worst,
Eternal life's shit, yet he clings;
The vampire drinks.

...and this vaguely Lovecraftian one (fun fact: any poem written in this ballad-style metre can be sung to the Pokemon theme tune, though that may not exactly hit the mood I was going for here).

Home

The ancient city calls me home,
I glimpse it when I sleep,
It gleamed before the rise of Rome,
It drowned beneath the deep.

The seething seas disgorged its might,
The oceans choked and failed,
Its eldritch power won the fight,
They frothed, and groaned, and wailed.

Forgotten temples echo songs,
A language lost to time,
The chanting tongues of long-dead throngs,
They gibber, claw, and rhyme.

My friend has fallen far behind,
The madness gnawed his brain,
He tore his eyes and howled there, blind,
A bullet took his pain.

The cyclopean idol calls,
I walk an empty street,
The city's ancient darkness falls,
Beneath its shroud we'll meet.

If you'd like to check the book out, you can find it at a variety of online stores, including the ones that branch off from this universal-link's landing page:

https://books2read.com/HorrorsTerrors...

You can also order the paperback at your local bookshop (ISBN 9798201698164).

As I say, the poems vary a lot, but expect a fair bit of blood, gore, and sundry atrocities.