Built on the site of an early Danish chapel (1095), the current structure dates largely from a reconstruction in 1686, but is still the only parish church on the north side of the Liffey surviving from a Viking foundation.

While the exterior of the church may be unimpressive, the interior boasts some fine woodwork, and an organ (dated 1724) on which Handel is said to have composed his Messiah.

Further into the bowels of the church, the vaults of St. Michan’s uniquely contain many mummified remains. The walls in the vaults contain limestone, which has kept the air dry, creating ideal conditions for preservation. Among the preserved remains are a 400-year-old nun, a six-and-a-half foot alleged crusader, Henry and John Sheares (leaders of the 1798 rebellion), and a body with its hands and feet severed. The various holders of the title Earl of Kenmare were also interred here.

St. Michan’s church contains plenty of coffins and 4 mummies. We can say that many of those people did not die peaceful or natural deaths since one of the mummies is missing hands and feet and other residents of the church’s bowels were known to have been hanged, drawn and quartered by the British for treason.

Many of the coffins have decayed, exposing skulls, hands, feet and other body parts. Some of the coffins belong to nobles and are decorated with crowns and other symbols of their status in life.

The main attraction for visitors are 4 mummies, one of which is said to be the remains of a nun. The mummies lie in 4 open coffins and it is said that the atmospheric conditions of the limestone lined church caused the mummification process, preserving their bodies.

In fact, there are companies that specialize in what they call “memory jewelery”. The stones they make out of the ashes can look like almost any gemstone, diamonds, ruby, sapphire, black onyx, etc.

A company called lifegem has even announced that they will be making a diamond out of late pop star, Michael Jackson’s hair. The option is not a cheap one, a synthetic diamond made from the ash you provide will run from $3500 for a 1/4 carat to almost 20k for a full carat stone. The company also has a family plan that gives you a discount for 4 or more.

20k may be a fair price to spend on a diamond made from grandma, but it may be a bit much if you would like to wear your deceased dog Fido around your finger. A company called Pet Gems has a cost effective solution.

Pet Gems does not create an entire stone from your late best friends ash, instead , they have a procedure that enhances an existing stone with your supplied ash. They take a Zircon, run it through their machine and you end up with a Fido

colored jewel. Pet Gems pricing seems to be around $400 for the 1 carat stone.

You can take a few table spoons of..

 and turn it into this.

Click Here to see the entire gallery for hallstatt and bone art

The good news is, that your bones will be on display, nicely painted and looked on as very macabre artwork.

Actually, its very cool that people took so much time and effort into remembering people that may have died centuries before and took such care as to create something very memorable out of the bones.

The skulls are painted by hand with the family name and year of death as well as pictures of flowers, crosses and leaves.

“The Bone House” is a small chapel with adjacent cemetery in Hallstatt, Austria. The cemetery holds many of the citizens of the town, but according to the headstones, only the recently deceased reside in the cemetery. The seeming newness of the graveyard is explained by a look inside the bone house, where rows and rows of beautifully painted skulls peer out.

The tiny graveyard could never hold the centuries worth of citizens of Hallstatt. Eventually, the small graveyard could no longer be enlarged, so in order to make room for new bodies, old ones were dug up, their skulls bleached in the sun, painted, sometimes with a family name, sometimes with flowers, leaves, or crosses and set in a row. Rows and rows of beautifully painted skulls peer out from empty sockets in this Austrian bone house. The practice began in 1720, and of the 1200 skulls in the Beinhaus, 610 of them are decorated in different styles, according to the time in which they were exhumed.

From the lovingly painted bones of ancestors to the beaded trophies of headhunters, from bone house chapels to skull-laden agibas, this macabre beauty is unusual, and yet, so familiar. All over the world, every culture has its own way in which to honor the dead. Some just happen to be a little more artistic than others. from curious expeditions

Click Here to see the entire gallery for hallstatt and bone art

This is a handpainted coffin for a miner with pics and shovels painted on the side.

In 1994 over 200 mummies were found in a closed off area of the Dominican church in Vác, Hungary. The conditions in the sealed crypt created a natural mummification of the bodies inside. The preservation was so good that even the clothing they were wearing was found intact as well as the items they were buried with and the artwork on the exterior of the coffins. Many of these artifacts are on display at the Memento Mori Museum in Vác.

What makes these mummies unique is not the preserved bodies, but the preserved handpainted artwork on the coffins themselves. Each coffin was hand painted with images that may have represented its occupant and no two coffins are identical.

 Everything from the rosaries to the handmade stockings on their feet were equally intact, offering a gold mine for ethnographers on the funerary customs and everyday life of 18th century Hungarian villages. There was something there for doctors as well; traces of ancient tuberculosis. An Australian surgeon, Dr. Mark Spigelman, has devoted the past 6 years to studying the bacteria found in one mummy in particular, and the information gleaned from this ancient DNA could provide information that will help fight tuberculosis.

From an article from curious expeditions…

A huge selection of the coffins are exhibited, many stacked on top of each other in the same formation they had been found in and had been in since the 1700s. Each coffin had been lovingly hand-painted with crucifixes, flowers, quotations, bible verses, angles, skull and crossbones, hourglasses, and Memento Mori inscriptions. No coffin is a repeat of another; the variety of color, decoration, motif and even language (some in German, some Hungarian, some Latin) is simply incredible. These coffins seem to be painted with an almost joyous hand, as a celebration of the life, not a mourning of the death. One coffin, belonging to a miner, is painted with bones, skulls and a miner’s pick and shovel. Each coffin had been personalized with great thought and care.

for modern bizarre coffins, click here to check out the image gallery 

40,000 dead, the skulls and skeletons, centuries of war and plague victims, all form the morbid artwork that fills the church - Sedlec’s Church - All Saints ossuary in the Czech Republic. In 1511, the ossuary was created - a half-blind monk gathered the human bones of the black death victims, which were added to with victims from 15th century Hussite Wars. Frantisek Rint, wood carver and artist was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to imaginatively compose the bones into works of art; amongst his creations came the Schwarzenberg family’s coat of arms, and a chandelier containing every bone in the human body, composed of several bodies. In the four corners of the ossuary sit four ‘bells’, pile upon pile of bones carefully stacked with a hollowed center.

From artagraphica, the explanation to this macabre holy ground.

In 1278 the Cistercian abbot of Sedlec, Henry, traveled to Palestine and the ‘Holy Land’, bringing home a sample of earth from Golgotha which was later, upon his return, sprinkled over the grounds of his local cemetery. The grounds were immediately considered scared, and hence became a much sought after location for relatives to bury their dead. In the 14th century, the Black Death spread the bubonic plague across Europe and now 30,000 bodies all wanted a resting place within the sacred grounds. Such vast numbers of dead led to the creation of the ossuary in 1511 by a half-blind monk who gathered up the bones to be stacked up within the ossuary, making space for new corpses, which were soon taken up by more victims from 15th century Hussite Wars. The ossuary itself is situated in the basement of the All Saint’s Chapel.

Sedlec is a suburb to Kutna Hora, a town in south Bohemia that once flourished due to its mined silver reserve. It is about an hour’s travel from Prague.

History of the Church from the church’s website:

A cistercian monastery was founded near here in the year 1142. One of the principal tasks of the monks was the cultivation of the grounds and lands around the monastery. In 1278 King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of Sedlec , on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. When leaving Jerusalem Henry took with him a handful of earth from Golgotha which he sprinkled over the cemetery of Sedlec monastery, consequently the cemetery became famous, not only in Bohemia but also throughout Central Europe and many wealthy people desired to be buried here.The burial ground was enlarged during the epidemics of plague in the 14 th century (e.g.in 1318 about 30 000 people were buried here) and also during the Hussite wars in first quarter of the 15 th. century.

After 1400 one of the abbots had a church of All -Saints erected in Gothic style in the middle of the cemetery and under it a chapel destined for the deposition of bones from abolished graves, a task which was begun by a half blind Cistercian monk after the year 1511. The charnel-house was remodelled in Czech Baroque style between 1703 - I710 by the famous Czech architect, of the Italian origin ,Jan Blažej SANTIM-Aichl. The present arrangement of the bones dates from 1870 and is the work of a Czech wood-carver, František RINT (you can see his name, put together from bones, on the right-hand wall over the last bench).
Our ossuary contains the remains of about 40 000 people. The largest collections of bones are arranged in the form of bells in the four corners of the chapel. When in Europe, you may visit the Sedlac Ossuary

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

‘Undefined’ crime

Read the rest of the story fro BBC news and the witchcraft trial in the middle east

This is a corset piercing all the way down her back, this is not a permanent piercing, usually corsets are pierced for shows and special occasions because they do not last long.

Here is another type of back temporary piercing, he has dozens of pins stuck through his skin all along the back.

Piercings are not for the young I guess, these next two gentlemen show that even older folks can still be into the bod mod and tattoo trends.

The next lady is supposed to be the record holder for most piercings for a woman. with hundreds of piercings and many piercings in her face, I do not doubt that record.

This man wanted no part of the traditional silver rings and barbells that are used for facial piercings, he went for the wicked and extreme route of barbed wire and tubes.

Here are a few more really pierced individuals with hundreds of piercings on the face neck and head.

Danse Macabre

Art has represented this subject with an intimate vigor in all forms and media. In the Middle Ages, the Black Plague would wipe out up to two thirds of some populations of countries in Europe causing a change in human outlook toward mortality. With the chances of each day being their last extremely high, the people began to look deeply at their own lives and wondered about the uncertainty of death.

The Danse Macabre (French) resulted from the idea that no matter who you are in life, the Dance of Death unites all. Typical in the accompanying art movement were depictions of death of all sorts from demons and devils to skeletons, usually dancing juxtaposed with the living, who cower in fear. It was a general warning to all people that any day you may be visited by the grim reaper, and so you should prepare yourself and pray. The common theme was all folk from pope to pauper would face death sooner or later.

The Afterlife and The Bible

Perhaps no single person’s death has been painted more in the history of art than that of Jesus Christ. The gruesome reminding of this religious icon’s tortuous death hangs in Christian homes, churches, chapels, bedrooms, and anywhere else you can think of to this day. More often than not, the painting or sculpture gives an accurate depiction of the horror of what a crucifixion must have been like: nails, blood and all.

Many portrayals of the biblical stories show the aftermath of Christ’s death. The body in the arms of his mother, the distraught disciples’ executions, the tomb, the resurrection of Christ into Heaven, and the assumption of his mother into Heaven have all been depicted in paintings over the centuries.

There are many examples of a horrible post-mortem destination such as Hell, oftentimes intended to warn people of their unholy ways. Hieronymus Bosch was a strong advocate for religious moral values and a firm believer in an eternal afterlife. Many of paintings show his fellow Man, swimming in sin, on a path to Hell lest they change their ways.

Not all afterlife visions were gloomy, however, with plenty of visions of Heaven and angels accepting those penitent people who knew all along not to waste their lives in sin and debauchery.

Death and The Maiden

The idea of an innocent young girl being courted by Death has been a long and celebrated one through art history. The obsession of human mortality can be seen in the practice of putting beauty next to horror. Some good ones are by Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Hans Baldung, and Kathe Kollwitz’s “Death Embracing a Woman” is probably the scariest one.

Similar to the Death and the Maiden was the Gustav Klimt painting Death and Life. The twisted group of warm, sleeping people are being stalked by the cold and waiting skeleton.

I’ll end this post with somewhat of an antithesis. I speak of Edvard Munch’s Vampire, the epitome of eternal life. I often wonder would I choose immortality such as this, or venture into the unknown that is Death.

With roots and filled-in hollow air,
He writes to you poetic obscurities;
He goes, my friend, where
The homeless dare: where
“Beauty is for the few” and into
The boundless cosmos and tombs;
Into and onto exotic landscapes,
Where poems—like bones—
Have decomposed;
Where darkness comes like all shadows:
To lock you in its tombs….

Dim and gray is his twilight,
As slowly dies his days—
But fate’s poetic obscurities,
Would have it no other way:
For the Rhymester’s shadows—
Never rest.

19) The Executioner of Chan Chan

Writ after visiting Chan Chan, an archeological site in Northern Peru.

Hungry, fearless, in a faceless form,
Likened to a mask, a monster forlorn,
He was the woe, the living dead,
From nightmares he was fed—

The Executioner of Chan Chan.

Bleak was his dawn, cold his heart,
Lulled by those whom would soon die—
Subdued by the temples’ mud-baked
Bricks—he decapitated his lot, sacrificially—

This Moche Warrior of Chan Chan.

April 29 2004 [8:00 PM].

20) Mercury’s Demise
(As Semyas meets Azaz’el)

Part of a story—writ a few hours before a flight from St. Paul to South America.

Mercury! Such awful sight
Planet of darkness, with no eyes,
Ware the Great Asteroids that bite:
The sun no longer gives you light….

A hellish moment: your demise,
Candles blown out, like blinded eyes:
Dust resides in your volcanic skies—
Two souls are left, that want to die.

April 2, 2004

21) Buried Souls from the Rephaim

And there his sarcophagus lay—
Beneath the towering mountains—
Stretching out of the deep, dark sea
(With all its weight, sealing his fate)—
No light, no day, only binding chains.
Lost, forgotten in the sand’s density….

Where no travelers have yet been:
No roads or skies to befriend;
Faceless skeletons, silent voices:
They all embraced in this veil of dark—
Embraced by looks, face to face—
Hungry to fill the emptiness of space.

Note: The Refaim Circle, otherwise known as the ‘Gilgal Refaim,’ is the only megalithic astronomical complex on earth, built 3000 BC, in the area now known as: the Golan Heights; made out of 37,000 tons of stones. It has been said it was constructed y biblical giants; comprising more area than at the Gaza pyramids.

22) The Poet Demon

“There are maggots under my feet,
Incense and madness in my tomb,”
He cries…he sighs, he never dies:
He dances to flutes, tapping feet,
And human fleece, and never knows why.

Oh yes, a tomb—with no spine,
Full of hopelessness, despair…
Sacrificial-gloom everywhere;
A hooded serpent of the deep,
He knows that he will never sleep.

23) The Birds of Genovesa

The beautiful gloom of Genovesa’s
Unfathomable vaults of birds
Peering from white eerie wooden sticks—
Vampires: Atlantean Vampires—
Clinging to trees that look like twigs,
Great idols looming—homelessly—
Your days belong to a primal calendar
I see….

10:30 AM, April 23 2004

Note: Written four hours after leaving the island of Genovesa, in the Galapagos.

24) The Devil’s Rose

Roses of black and orange
From hell’s cryptic doors,
They are scorned—lo,
Like blood in a storm:
Bred by malefic jackals,
Hell-howling Hyenas—
Sealed in coffins by nails,
Incarcerating their evil enchantments;
Guarded by the Demon Ghost, alas—
Should a rose be lost or stolen,
It puts blood—upon the soul!—
Cold, cold—blood.

This is the forbidden rose—
Descended from Satan’s breath,
Made from his waste—puss and piss,
His vomit and sweat, his blasphemy
Inside the scent.

Incantations echo, emitted;
Discharged, from its pores:
Should you pass it to another,
Take it as a gift—
You seal your death.

April 6 2004, Lima, Peru

25) Hieroglyphs of Doom

I’m always surprised
How an artist can make
Ugliness, death, gloom
Decay, demonic-hues—
And Satan himself look…
Lovely.

The tomb and urn, darkness,
Plague, crawling toads, slime:
All vanish into uncharted
Flares of solar fire—
Fires of beautiful light?

I’m always surprised
How the atheist seals,
Locks his tomb—while
Looking, looking for light!

Successfully, we slowly carve
Our hieroglyphs of doom.

3:30 PM, April 14 2004, Lima, Peru

26) Mirrors and Marrow

On this hot and cold, bold,
Windy earth, with its breathless
Tireless twists, and curves,
Is not life a street, a city of
Stone, ink and bread—
Of heart, essence and will?
Where arched-holy steeples
Tower and blink, at moving
Souls?

Where

Poverty is the mirror for all,
Whence you climb, eternally
Wanting the treasure that,
That to only a few befalls;
In sadness, each part—dies,
Wishing they had climbed more walls.

April 11 2004, Lima, Peru

27) The Lotus Demons’ Lair
(The Lotus Demon of Mercury)

Lo, the toiling sun spins
Above the roof of his den,
Above the Great Volcanic Crater
Of Mercury—where
The Lotus Demons live.

With unshadowed images,
Spun in the friendless deep,
As fate would have it, none,
None who enter—escape.

April 13 2004, Lima, Peru

28) Earshot

The FBI was after him
(So he claims)
Fearful of Castro
(If not everything)

No money for taxes
Living in a drunken stupor
Trying to finish a manuscript
(“A Moveable Feast”)
Allusions to suicide
Blood pressure going high

No doctors please
He cried
(The Mayo Clinic nearby)

Suicide scenario
Depression took
His soul and character

He bought death with
Consuming drinks
He even conned himself
(I think)

Violently angry
Pinned in blame
For an insane life
He tried to lead

From Paris to Cuba
To Ketchum he was
Was he an old man lost
Lost at sea

Hemingway
Shotgun in hand with
His big-toe pulled
The trigger very slowly
And off flew his cranium

March, 2004

Note: considered for an award; also, reviewed by Barns and Noble, Poetry Review [competition], Rossville, Minnesota.

29) House without Windows

I am building a house with no windows
And a very small door,
And my friends all ask me why.

Life has been for me full of anxiety—
And I care not to let it in any more;
So you see, I am making a very small door.

And having no windows allows
What is outside not to look in—
Thus freeing my spirit to rest again….

Note: published in the Magazine: The Mango Tree, out of India [August/September, 2004]

30) Armageddon’s Hecatomb

Know ye that His kingdom shall come—
In days hence, thy days shall be gone
(I like former dust: dayless,
Speaking from chambers long gone)—
From Hell to Earth the demons come
(A tinge of gladness in their songs)—
Thou shalt live to see them.

Lo—a great army from the north
Cometh, cometh, in full force;
Soon, sword and flesh shall shortly meet:
On the field of Armageddon.

Quoth the Demon of the Pit, “Alas!”;
For, upon the Throne of Earth,
He whose Horse is White sitteth
And biddeth farewell,
As doth ebb the realm of hell.

31) Armageddon’s Incubus

In Europe, the enchantress sculpts—
From earth to hell—peculiar spells,
Makes a changing world ebb.

From within her sphere’s crystal gaze—
Dark shadows, blood-soaked graves,
Molded steps that lead to nowhere,

Time’s phantoms—
All of whom are tyrannous—
Walk up and down these eldritch stairs,

Waiting to call together iron forces:
The architects of war.
Unremitting silence masks the globe

Of mortal woes and secrets told;
And now that wisdom’s turned about,
Draws forth Abyssal demon-cults

(All mobilized, coming to life).
Funerals, pendulums, brutality:
It’s all part of what must be.

32) Nightmare

He lives within the deep
Where others never sleep—
Monstrous fathoms below,
Where lava rivers flow,
And crowding waters rush.

He is the nightmare demon
With a flat, untraversable form—
Lying in a bottomless tomb,
Undoomed, haply awakened,
Awaiting slumber.

Note: This poem was inspired by the Clark Ashton Smith’s picture,’ Nightmare’, and was written right after the purchase of the original picture from Tom Strausky, who purchased it through G. de la Ree, circa l980; at which time the picture was named.

33) Glossary of End Times

Four
Horses
Running wild
Hoof beats awaken
The hungry and sleeping world
Waiting for the seventh trumpet
Angels are in the winds
Hail and fire and blood
Burning mountains
Falling

Birth pangs
And three woes
The Seventh Trumpets
The Seven Bowls
The Seven Seals
False Prophet
The Dragon
The Beast
Anti-

Christ
Takes the
Place of
Christ

From her mind to her clitoris,
To her nipples and lips,
Wooed like a bird perched on a stick:
She melted like butter
Until there was no other.

35) Tagaririm (Arch devil Belphegor)

He speaks only in Aramaic, calling up the dead—
For vagary, spells and signs, to hide
The Atziloth scrolls, until the four heavens divide,
Until—until the end of time….

From different worlds, his powers come—
Briah, Yetzirah and Asiah—where immortal veils
Never meet (Neschamah, Ruach and Nephesch);
And questing armies never die.

Lo, Samaul, Evil Spirit of the soul, waits for thee,
Thy signature O Belphegor—
To unroll the scroll,
Bearing the names of angelic beings and demonic foes.

36) Dream Maker [Part 1 of 5]

Who crafts a dream
Puts us to sleep!
What ear shall hear
Or balance meet—
To wake us up
Upon our feet?

II: Comes the Dream

Comes the dream,
An inkling memory
Sealed tight—clasping
In a darkened room
(In soul-vaults).

III: Ancient Scrolls

Endless mysteries
Of the spirit’s plight
Weave the inner twilight.
Unending suns—gloom!
Ancient dreams and scrolls….

IV: Sleeping Mind

In each sleeping mind,
Light can seldom find
The formless decay,
Of ones dragging worlds
To be left, behind;

For heaven’s melody,
Darkness lurks
As the mind hovers:
The strains seep out—
Lo! Bend the vine:
Let the sunsets in, Awaken
(All’s forgotten).

V: Lonely, Lost

The Dream-maker shouts:
“I found songs unsung,”
Lonely, lost a while,
Unto and into thy grief,
Thy grief, my grief now sung.

Ah! Death has lost its sting:
And dreams have lost
Their pulse—
“Thou shalt not wake this time,”
The Dream-maker shouts.

37) The Macabre Serpent of Space

With chilling sarcophagus grimace,
The ill-omen serpent appeared
From out of the shadows of space…

Lo! More ancient than man, it thirsts for a name
A place in unutterable space—
Yet, only blackness—cul-de-sac….

38) C.A. Smith

The cypress blows over my grave:
Oh would I hide from you—
Yet I write…all the same.

Ah! –I am a ghost:
With shadows above me—
And demon ears below.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website; a favorite of my friend’s, Phillip Ellis.

39) I. The Woods in the Sea

Upon the throne, of the moon,
Across the land, into the sea,
He treads: walks endlessly
For the entire world to see.

The wind is from the north,
The bright stars rest in the west,
The gift of second-sight
Resides within his chest.

He knows he cannot rest—
For unseen shores yet to come
From lands both dim and gray,
Lands of new outcomes.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website 6/04

40) II: Shadow of Fate

If one lives with the god of hate,
High or low be he,
Such is his fate….

41) III: Talons

I will weave the pale shadows
(Time lost, time forgotten—):
All into pallid brows
Onto the stranger’s talons:
While I sink into the board-walk—
Let him tell his tall tales.

42) IV: Wild Stones

Who is the witch, the demon—
The culprit and the ghoul?
I could not tell for the life of me:
So I forgave them, one and all.

And then I slept a long sleep
(Forgiving is quite a chore)—
Then, when I woke to meet the day,
Love had conquered all.

43) V: Satan’s Sidekick’s

The men that chum with Satan—
Their hearts cannot forgive;
They see no more in love,
Than mercy can see to give.

The men that chum with Satan—
Their gods are many and small;
They drift away like white ghosts
Climbing demonic walls.

The men that chum with Satan—
Seldom can they sleep;
And through their nightmare visions,
With flames and smoke they leap.

They walk the earth alone—they do,
Strange, deep with palest eyes.
Always thinking they were cheated:
With footsteps dogged by lies.

And in the halls of Belshazzar—
Their ghostly eons twist and twine;
Always knowing naught of hope,
Beyond the blazing line.

44) VI The Great Flood of ’51

The night is dark, the Mississippi
Lies asleep;
Velvet mists veil the blood-spattered moon
(With hoary strange eyes):
Restless with hazy fear, and slumber
Of her sleep
(White thunder in the skies).
She hears the whisper of the
Ghostly storm (booming far—
Encircling near)
Glide overnight—overhead—ready:
To be born (like a hammer of Thor).
“I shall go forth!” she hears:
And down the scarlet veil, hails
Triumph is in its roar—the storm:

Roads, men, levee and homes—
Cliffs and bridges tossed about:
The untamable god has freed the clouds.

Continuation from the: Macabre Poems

45) Poe’s Legacy

If Poe hadn’t have been born—

There’d have been no rapping or tapping—
(at least for a while—at my door?)
Nor would there had been morbid beauty
with depth and sin…
That circles the globe—nor HPL and CAS.
What a mundane life (it would have been)
without the devil’s pen.

I gripped the legacy: lying on savage ground,
the third-eye of the hunter, filled with wax—
calls for breath, in the silent Valley of Shock;
thus, stung—I remain, by the fruitless trees
of horror—then I hear a whisper:

“Lord, help my poor soul.”

June 4 2004

Inspired by Phillip Ellis.

46) Loving in Limbo

Mother! Mother!
My precious one!
To whose dearest love Will harmony run?
Oh! Thy will it is
In the winters to cross
Or lay simply still
Like October’s frost;
Now my form is cold—
(As in trance I’m snared)
Keeping heart and soul
With songs threadbare?

June 6 2004

47) Mystery of Mysteries

We’re born alone, as shall we die
Looking at the hour of drifting—
A Mystery of Mysteries!
We are pitifully helpless things….

The Watchman’s guardian eye,
For Him—it is not loneliness;
The drumming of the unguided
Lends allurement—with chanting nearby.
In life and death, two faces pry;
One shall overshadow: they cry

Be it night or day, though face may frown,
Unready for the final dawn
And pandemonium near, throbbing:
Comes the drifting of the hour—
As we’re born, we die: alone—
A Mystery of Mysteries!

48) Rosinina Tapi of the Sacred Valley

It was long, long, so long ago
in the Sacred Valley of Peru,
wherein a maiden lived, no one really knew,
by the name of Rosinina Tapi—
and this maiden lived with no other thought:
than to live out her life within this sacred spot.

I was a Prince and She was to be,
in this kingdom of the Sacred Valley;
we fell in love: ardent and unconditionally,
I and my Princess to be—
with a cherished worship, that only Heaven
could see.

And so it was, that long, long ago
in this kingdom in the Sacred Valley
a ghostly wind blew to and fro
(out of a void no one knew):
after my lovely Rosinina Tapi,
thus inspiring her kinsmen
to take her away from me.
They hence shut her up—in a eerie vault
Within the kingdom of the Valley.

Ah! the devils, the devils, that dwelt in Hell,
Were envying her and I—
Oh yes!—‘twas their quest
(as all knew within the Sacred Valley),
that the ghostly wind that blew to and fro
through the cracks of the earth:
had seized and killed my Rosinina Tapi.

And sad was I, to bury my dreams,
(such memories that had to be):
and under the moonbeams, my beautiful Rosinina Tapi
was buried within the Sacred Valley.

49) The Ancient Sharra

You that rest in utter and gloomful darkness
Who come from the middle of the world—
The Sharra Indians with shrunken heads,
Colored feathers, blow-guns with
Fearful darts,
Along the equator’s rim—that doesn’t spin—
To you I pour forth my autumn nights.

Note: 4/20/04: written during a visit at the Middle of the World at the Ecuador (000)

50) Satan’s Galapagos

By the dark shadows
Vowed to Lucifer,
By his sealed prophets
Foreshown,
By these, by these I claim
Thee—
By trickery, wine and sorcery—
I have tried to bend thy
Footsteps
In the peaceful Galapagos.

April 24 2004; Lima, Peru

Note: written returning from the Galapagos, to Lima, Peru; many strange and disruptive incidents, occurred.

51) Fading Worlds

Behind a great shadow,
A world fades—
This is the price of beauty—
How many stars are lost
This way—
Lost within the oceans,
Fading skies?
So many lost worlds… die….

In memoriam Clark Ashton Smith April 10 2004, Lima, Peru; revised May 5 2004.

52) Lost Souls

Shadows of the lost souls,
If you call on them,
Will never let you go.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru

53) The Goat man’s Fancy

She heard the coming of the Doom—
In the silence still of the moon—
For, half-enchanted with his stars
In the twilight of his youth,
To the desert he did part.

Now, with the moon unlit,
He left her heart…
As if she was to mutter on
And sing his starry, lonesome song!

Henceforth triumphant
Was the Devil’s rose:
For she poured his devilish poisons, cold—
And muttered on, to a new moon….

54) The Hoofed Demon

He heard me not, nor saw
Knowing my presence as he should:
He whispered.

*Ecuador, Quito, 4/25/04

55) Buried Souls

And there his sarcophagus lay—
Beneath the towering mountains—
Stretching out of the deep, dark sea
(With all its weight, sealing his fate),
No light, no day, only binding chains.
Lost, forgotten in the sand’s density…

Where no travelers have yet been,
No roads or skies to befriend,
Faceless skeletons, silent voices:
They all embraced in this veil of dark
— Embraced by looks: face to face—
Hungry to fill the emptiness of space.

April 1 2004, St. Paul, Minnesota

56) The Pale Horse of Rano Raraku

Jesus said: “Know what is before your face and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you;” From: ‘the Gospel of Thomas’.

It is to you, to you among the living that I write; for indeed, I may be dead, and am of little concern if so. For the years now that are in the past, the last few in particular, have been years of terror, of intense dread, as circles the world this very moment, to escalate, I do believe—escalate around the globe, and so I write this by inspiration of a story I heard:

Into and onto the Isla de Pascua,
Navel of the world (window to the Pacific)—
Whose Moai Eyes of towering volcanic stones
Look towards the Heavens,
As if their spirits were trapped, bound within,
Afraid, fearful, frightened, to leave their stone abode,
To face their worldly sins—

Thus, rides the Pale Horse of Rano Raraku’s rim —of Rano Raraku’s rim.

Ah, distinctly, eagerly, pacing,
‘Tis a visitor who comes racing—
Into and onto the whisper of Rano Raraku
To catch the first glimpse,
The very first glimpse, peep, and hint… of Apocalypse—
Deception and pestilence travel with him,
The Pale Horse: Tribulation—

Whence comes hail and fire from above, mixed with blood;
The sun, moon and stars darken.

Henceforth, the Pale Horse comes racing, riding,
From the rim of this wondrous volcanic site.
The seventh trumpet is now ready to be blown,
The woes and vials to be poured:
Within the magic and mystery of this story
Rides the Pale Horse dying, dying, dying—dead,
On the rim of Rano Raraku;

Watching, watching—the stranger, Austrian, grim:
Thus comes the world’s sins;

As he witnesses the pain—the horse’s message:

“The God-King is not dead—
The God-King is coming….”

Inspired by my poet friend, Johannes [2004]