I was not warned to fear the strike of One.
But still I cannot think the dark is void -
I’m not deceived - as for a thousand crimes
My Erinys is clawing at the family seat.
Go to the glass for it will come: see grey
Mist creep upon a darkened town.
Whilst staring from my watch-worn window,
A fey frost-breath now swells before me.
Dread hazing snarl, foul scenting sniff;
It tracks, and nothing I posses can hide me.
A cloud-wolf wending through the waving trees
In bitter cold without a breath of breeze.
Yet I have stolen nothing! Hold no cause,
Except my mind, for which to hunt me down.
But how that mind betrays, so many times,
As blistering thoughts have railed against my kin.
I feel its body in the fog
Gigantic footprints in the grass
It smells the fear the guilt the blood
The beating of the tell-tale heart
These clawing tendrils reach and rise
Till vapours stop my rasping mouth.
A spectre touching proves itself transparent
And I am in the belly of the beast.
Author notes
Well, first I need to apologise. All i started out to do was write a poem about fog, and it turned into a gothic paranoia-fest with more literary references than you could shake a stick at.
Anyway, Note 1, before you head to wikipedia "Erinyes" is the Greek name for the furies, goddesses who pursue people for murdering their own family.
Note 2, for those who like a challenge, the references come from: Aeschylus, TS Eliot, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe. Bonus points to anyone who can spot all of them, lol.
I'm not sure what to do with this one. I want it to be gothic, and paranoid, and thus an element of melodrama is necessary, but I don't want it to become too obscure and difficult... yet I quite like the literary allusions... Ah well, tell me what you make of it.
Chris
PS. Just had to do an emergency edit cause I realised my crhistmas carol reference was in fact wrong. Bugger.
Comments
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I am seriously out of words. I really don't know what to say, but you are really skilled. My comment is going to sound really stupid compared to those who have already said something... My favorites are the second and fourth stanzas. The first and second also connect really nicely.
I am awed. I have no words.
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Hehe, superlative praise always makes me feel very unworthy, but thank you very much. And nah, your comment wasn't stupid at all. Actually quite interesting, because the stanza you said were your favourites are the two most coherent, I think, so I know what works
Thanks so much for taking the time,
Chris
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This is good.
Your flow creeps and seems to envelope the reader in a sense of claustrophobic paranoia that wraps around and seems to instill a feeling of foreboding, or of things to come, as if a karmic return is due and the subject of the poem is running from it, it being the hound personified as impending karmic payback. You did a good job with that angle. However, to my knowledge karma does a poor job and criminals are often well rewarded.
A friend of mine is a Sherrif's deputy and he once informed me that only thirty percent of all crime committed is ever resolved with a conviction. Crime actually does pay if people are smart about it. The people in jail are the stupid ones, apparently, and we are surrounded by criminals daily.
I think the concept of Karma and of retribution were invented to assist in the prosecution of criminals by getting them to roll over on themselves in hopes of mediating Karma. But really, shit just happens, good people die, bad people get rich by criminal activity, and stupid criminals go to jail.
Good write, and that Hitchcock movie "The Telltale Heart" is great. I remember seeing that when I was a kid and the sense of fear and paranoia is intense.
Good stuff, Iorek.
al
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Hey,
Cheers for taking the time to read. Nah, karma doesn't work, I think I'm enough of a nihilist by now that I wouldn't end up wasting much thought on karma, lol. I guess the poem is much more that the guy is *expecting* recompense for what he thinks he has done, so it's far more concerned with guilt.
And uh, nt meaning to rain on your parade, but Hitchcock never directed a movie called The Tell-Tale heart. Maybe you saw an adaptation of the Edgar Alan Poe short story?
Chris -
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I did see an adaptation
and apparently it wasn't Hitchcock. But it was very good, nonetheless.
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In the Dead Of Night!
Creeping forth with ghoulish intent are we Iorek? Nice to see your eclectic quill dabbling in gothic reverie, mate! And with reference points galore to boot! Might as well start a pitiable attempt there.
Is the Hound of the Baskervilles in here somewhere, Iorek?
Telltale heart s easy enough. I ve read just about everything of HP Lovecraft aswell but can t recall enough to ellucidate the reference. Is it the last stanza? And Elliot - is the second? Or is that Dickens (unless its the fourth). Daggnabbit! My brain just ground to a halt.
A good write, promising perhaps more than it actually delivers in terms of dread, I thought. The finale could ve been more dramatic - a build up of tension: "a spectre touching proves..." is a little tame as a second to last concluding line.
A slight thing: the Erinyes are plural perils yet the poem goes over to a singular beastie from stanza 2. Perhaps continuity might be enhanced by sticking to descriptions of a single foul nemesis.
Enjoyable as always!
Regards
gGollygGoth!
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Oh, and just to pick your brains...
Originally:
I feel its body in the fog,
Gigantic footprints in the grass,
It smells the fear, the guilt, the blood,
The beating of the tell-tale heart,
Was:
I feel its body in the fog, the form
Of its gigantic footprints in the grass,
It smells the fear, the guilt, the blood,
The beating of the tell-tale heart,
Now, I prefer the earlier version in isolation, but I felt that the poem was plodding a little, and cutting a foot out of the first two lines seemed to speed things up, although it did lose the enjambament. Do you have an opinion? -
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Certainly do.
Well I reckon the first (minus a foot) example is most efficacious, Iorek. Partly because you have some interesting slant rhyme going on there:
fog - blood
grass - heart
and for the dramaturgy of the sudden realisation that the fog conceals something not altogether conducive to a relaxing ramble accross the moors.
mygGoditsalive!
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And like I say in the notes...
...all I meant to write was a poem about fog!
In terms of the critique parts, the plural Erinyes is part of the Aeschylus/Eliot thing (there's a clue there) going on. A single Erinys is a weird thing, and rare in Greek literature, so it doesn't quite feel right... but you are however absolutely right in terms of the sense of the poem, so you've given me a poser.
Mm, yes, I suppose the actual dread could be, uh, "improved" (heh). An interesting issue I suppose, as it is in many ways deliberately anticlimactic. In an ideal world I want a mental disintegration without anything happening, which is why I liked him being swallowed by the fog, because on the one hand it surrounds you, whilst on the other, when you are that close, you cannot see it.
I'm not sure how easy it is to say "when it reaches you it is invisible" without it being slightly tame after the build up, but still... wasn't the most energetic wording the world. *ponder*
In terms of the references... Dickens is in the first, as is Eliot (although now that you've said it, there is an unintentional echo of the fog characterised as a dog that "licks the windowpanes", which is... Prufrock?), Baskervilles is largely in the fifth. The Lovecraft - and here's a large hint - is in the title and the fourth.
Cheers for the very useful review,
Chris
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hey Iorek,this is how it comes across to me,
You have killed your family in your mind many times,because of this you anticipate the arrival of the Goddess Erinyes,you look through your window and see a foggy figure approaching that will smell your fear,track you down and devour you in one misty, cloudy, foggy, transparent torture-munch as you struggle to remain sane
One tiny part that I dont particularly like,it feels you are making too obvious an effort to emphasise the growing tension and inevitability that you aim for in the stanza..its the Oh-oh. at the beginning of verse 5..im sure you will explain your reason behind it so I will throw albumen on my acne right now
Your writing is an intellectuals wet dream
see you later
Rhet
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In place of the "oh- oh" have gone for rapid increase in meter. A few words got sliced, lol.
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Yup, pretty much got it. I guess the "crimes" as they are, in no way have to be murder, it's just the whole overly dramatic and paranoid tone of the thing. I guess as this poem became more and more about paranoia, I wanted it to be something for which somebody felt guilty, without actually doing anything, and I think resentment or anger at your family is something that some people can do a lot internally, without ever outwardly expressing it.
I also liked the whole insubstantialness of fog, as both a menacing and utterly benign presence. That it can look like this solid, terrifying wall of grey, but then when you reach it, there's nothing there, even though it might surround you. Hence the whole "belly of the beast" thing.
Okay, right, I shall remove the "oh"s forthwith. I was always unsure about them. It was purely that I was reading the poem to myself when I got the finished draft done, and when reading I wanted to put a sigh in there. And if I ever perform it, maybe they'll go back in, but as printed words they just don't come off.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments,
Chris
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whew. i don't know man. i knew who erinyes was...i'm big on mythology. i've read some ts elliot and a lot of poe, but all i picked up on was tell tale heart.
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Yeah, I think the references are very obvious if you know the thing being references. But, for example, the ELiot is from one of his plays, which not that many people know. Nothing like some Poe
Thanks for reading,
Chris -
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they always are once you know the things being referenced
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