Read Thirteen Black Roses: Gothic Romantic Poetry Page 1




  THIRTEEN BLACK ROSES

  Gothic Romantic Poetry

  By

  CHRISTOPHER COURTLEY

  Thirteen Black Roses: Gothic Romantic Poetry by Christopher Courtley

  Copyright 2013 by Christopher Courtley

  Cover design by Christopher Courtley

  https://www.christophercourtley.com

  O Rose, thou art sick!

  ~William Blake

  CONTENTS

  To A Sick Rose

  Descending Angel

  Addiction

  To Lilith, Queen of Darkness

  Medusa

  Nosferatu, or Despair

  The Ghost

  The Comical Tragedy

  How Frantically We Clothe Each Naked Day

  The Layers of Illusion

  My Garden of Proserpine

  Wedding Night

  No Swan Song

  About the Author

  To A Sick Rose

  My Rose, O thou art sick, but it is I

  Who wrap myself in shadow to escape

  The noisome day and to thy bosom fly;

  Who bite thy lips and from them kisses rape—

  My clutches desperate, my head a swarm

  That buzzes with a thousand sleepless nights

  Until I rest inside thee soft and warm;

  My secret Rose, whose crimson bed’s delights

  Alone can still the howling of the storm

  That rages with a thousand anguished cries

  And spends its fury on thy trembling form

  Before it once again begins to rise

  Up from my core corruption, roiling thick,

  Devouring my life—Rose, I am sick!

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  Descending Angel

  Through the rain’s grey haze I sometimes see

  An angel sail across the night’s deep ocean

  Wrapped in sombre swathes of mystery

  Feline and ethereal in motion.

  Surreal, she glides, with sweeping eyes exotic

  Concealing more about her than they tell;

  In havens strange she weathers storms erotic

  And holds some phantom lover in her spell.

  Or perhaps she walks this world unknown

  Adrift like me upon the seas of time

  Wandering deserted streets alone

  Until the morning sun begins its climb.

  I’ll never know, nor share my secret pain;

  She passes, virginal, just like the night

  Descending with the dark clouds and the rain

  To seize my heart before she takes to flight.

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  Addiction

  She stalks the shadows of my mind

  And the dreams she leaves behind

  Taunt me with her memory

  Haunting nightmarish ecstasy.

  A sickly lust, a prick of fear—

  The night descends and brings her here

  Naked and untouched by man

  A moon-white virgin courtesan.

  She is all and I am hers

  Abject slave to a heart that stirs

  For no one—so I nightly sit

  In paradises counterfeit.

  Loving her is poisoned bliss

  Her kiss is death and still I kiss;

  So banish sun and harsh daylight

  And come sweet angel of the night—

  Come upon the moonlight’s streaming

  Come and light my darkest dreaming

  Come and fill my veins with pleasure—

  All I want, and all I treasure.

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  To Lilith, Queen of Darkness

  There’s a sweet, sharp knowledge only gleaned in the night

  Far from the noise and the noisome light

  Of day and distraction, formation and fight—

  The dark and the silence that nurtures delight,

  Healing old wounds and soothing the spite

  That attends our struggles and impedes our flight.

  Night is for lovers and liers in truth

  Sweetest of tongue and sharpest of tooth;

  The eye of the day brings the harshest of lights;

  So to hell with my days—only give me your nights!

  Give me your darkness to nourish my soul;

  Give me your nakedness, plain, pure and whole—

  Give me the sweetness my sharpness desires

  And give me the sharpness my sweetness requires.

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  Medusa

  Once greedy for her golden hair

  I plucked a strand from her fair head,

  But fixed in her medusa stare

  My feet to her stone floor were wed.

  Now ever standing frozen there

  Impaled by Cupid’s leaden dart

  I watch her with an eyeless glare

  And weigh her with a statue’s heart.

  How swiftly once the hours fled,

  But now they stalk; a lion’s share

  Upon my weary soul has fed

  And laid her sordid secrets bare.

  Within her chamber bathed in red,

  Clad only in her golden hair,

  As alchemists make gold from lead

  So she makes love without a care

  To any who will grace her bed

  An hour or two and then depart.

  One night she looked at me and said:

  “Ah, what a fragile work of art

  You are, my dear.” Then I with dread

  Perceived how she could break apart

  My body as though it were bread,

  Crumble to bits my statue’s heart

  And crush my frozen eyeless glare

  To dust beneath her august tread

  For winds to sweep from out her lair.

  But she just laughed and tossed her head

  To kiss me with her golden hair

  As turning she went back to bed.

  And still she keeps me standing there,

  A figure neither live nor dead.

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  Nosferatu, or Despair

  Now once again Despair hath sunk

  Its rotting teeth into my will,

  And of my aspirations drunk,

  And of my dreams taken its fill.

  Upon its rank and icy breath

  Is borne the stinking waste of years

  Infecting everything, like Death,

  Whose robes are steeped in blood and tears

  As stooping over all my cares

  It throws long shifting shadows on

  The steeply climbing, crumbling stairs

  Of my ambitions, almost gone

  And quickly fading from my sight

  Into the stalking mists of time

  Like corpses drained to leprous white

  Deep in a pit, heaped o’er with lime,

  The plague victims of my intent,

  Those hopes and dreams I once held dear

  In slow decay lie impotent

  As I do in the grip of fear.

  And those inverted creatures, my

  Unrestful thoughts and nightmares, bring

  To life a scream born from a sigh

  As shadowed night doth give them wing;

  A sigh so deep that no abyss

  Nor even the unfathomed sea

  Nor even Death’s cold, endless kiss

  Can rival its profundity.

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  The Ghost

  As I walk the sodden banks of this river of human souls

  That hurry onward to their common destiny

  I observe them as they say their lines and play their little roles


  And dance to the tune of a tragic symphony.

  I haunt your world like a ghost mourning the life it lost

  A shadow watching from the corners of your envied existence

  For I cannot cross the river you have crossed

  And so there lies between us an infinite distance.

  But sometimes in the ocean depths of your eyes

  I can see the shimmer of a shining yesterday

  Like something you just couldn’t exorcise

  That left its silver lining amid the grey.

  As through this carnival of souls I move unhurried

  The baggage of my former life left far behind

  Gone but not forgotten, though deeply buried

  A priceless treasure none will ever find

  In the masked and painted faces of the figures passing by

  I read a thousand books that say the same damned thing

  A thousand different ways, and with a lonely sigh

  I seek the solace solitude will bring.

  So here I stand alone, and here alone I stay

  I cannot enter your world, nor will you enter mine

  My one remaining hope is that one day

  They will once again collide and recombine.

  And sometimes in the ocean depths of your eyes

  I can see the shimmer of a shining yesterday

  Like something you just couldn’t exorcise

  That left its silver lining amid the grey

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  The Comical Tragedy

  we bring our demons with us

  lying as we go

  inviting all our evils in

  visible transparent show

  and ever so obscure

  the exorcising of the cure

  never to be grasped by us

  who hold ourselves so clean and pure

  as we primp and prance and pose

  parading in our emperors clothes

  pointing fingers in secure

  assessment of each others woes

  arrayed in naked faults we grin

  and snicker at our fellows sin

  for as without us so within

  the fun house mirrors we abjure

  too tempting is the ancient lure

  to gossip and to some add vice

  all guilt with virtues to assure

  that we are all so very nice

  to bring our demons with us

  in this traveling circus show

  acting out a freakish mythos

  crying as we go

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  How Frantically We Clothe Each Naked Day

  How frantically we clothe each naked day

  With every ornament that comes our way

  In masques and revelries adorn our time

  Ridiculously prance and pantomime

  Like clowns who with their antics hope in vain

  To drown out for one moment all the pain

  That shrieks beneath its costume nonetheless

  As in its former poverty of dress.

  The ghost of winter in our dream of spring

  Still casts its shadow over everything—

  The phantom at the ball who does his best

  To make himself a most unwelcome guest.

  We make a show of shrugging off our cares

  But laughter is a mask that trembling wears.

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  The Layers of Illusion

  The world and we are semblance and no more;

  Beneath each different mask indifference lies—

  The layers of illusion we adore

  Conceal a dull despair that never dies.

  Behind the masquerade that life puts on

  There yawns a vast but empty banquet hall

  Where echoes of a chorus long since gone

  Give rise to forms like shadows on the wall.

  Loud pageants pass, and thrill, annoy, or bore;

  The games we play at best serve to amuse.

  Why strive to win when no one’s keeping score

  And more to gain is simply more to lose?

  While we in relays run our bootless race

  To build our lies upon another’s lies,

  Our weary feet can only serve to trace

  Wide circles in the sands of enterprise.

  As clouds drift by, and neither stand nor fall

  So sail we on to some imagined shore

  Until time strips us bare and of us all

  Makes clumsily an end, and then no more.

  Thus frenziedly we whirl as in a dream

  Through shifting seasons in their endless round

  Where all we know of things is how they seem,

  To spokes of Fortune’s wheel forever bound.

  So scorn the world as but a painted whore,

  Or love her—only pay her and have done.

  The lies we lived, the truths by which we swore

  Will lie with her and in her and be one.

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  My Garden of Proserpine

  Sleep’s the soothing balm for scathing time;

  To lie awash in dreams, half-waking still

  Between the never-land of bliss sublime

  And lucid labyrinths of what-you-will;

  Such sleep is sweet. But bitter gall is better,

  For honey-slow, this syrup sly as sin

  From its first slinking serpent-subtile letter

  (Kiss-shaped whisper, worm of saccharine)

  Slips in, a silken silver murderess

  To shrink from as I never have from pain—

  That heroine of Nod whose cold caress

  Once drew from tainted blood the sons of Cain.

  So you slip in, my garden of delight,

  Golgotha, grinning skull of pale-horsed Death,

  Through scarlet tears in skin once virgin-white,

  With flowers, rot, and grave-dirt on your breath.

  Such sleep’s a comfort I cannot endure;

  A cipher like a circle to confine

  And pin me to your wheel of cause and cure;

  Your milk and honey and your sour wine.

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  Wedding Night

  The dark night softly calls to me and beckons me to bed

  With promises like sand grains tinkling through an hourglass

  And whispers of sweet nothing upon which to rest my head;

  A pillow of oblivion beneath the even grass.

  As dusk had drawn its velvet curtain on the world’s unrest

  The veil over my eyes was lifted; darkness shone like light

  And then a lifetime’s longing rose from deep within my breast

  As I prepared to give myself to my eternal night.

  How soothing and seductive, these caresses formed of bliss;

  The life that once entranced is ravished now by Death’s allure,

  For he has breathed into my bosom with his endless kiss

  A shadow of that consummation I cannot abjure.

  No more is time my enemy; I’ve put away all pride;

  Hence even hope has flown, with all the burden of my cares—

  And now with pure abandon will my soul, that joyous bride

  Embraced by her Beloved, shed this garment that she wears.

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  No Swan Song

  I have no swan song; words desert me now

  That I have lost my youthful poet’s soul.

  I have no will to sing one anyhow;

  My heart’s as empty as a beggar’s bowl.

  Such poor unhappy lines as I might pen

  Cannot but show the dearth of feeling there,

  As they fall flat and fizzle out again

  And again, without their former flair.

  And though they aptly show my poverty

  Of spirit, passion, and creative fire,

  This alone does not make poetry,

  No more than ashes make a funeral pyre.

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  About the author:

  Christopher Courtley has been spinning tales for nearly four decades. He wrote his first poem when he was around eight, but it wasn't until his late teens that he became a prolific poet. Born and raised in the slums of New York City, he has come to appreciate the finer things in life, such as cutlery, napkins, music made with real instruments, sophisticated women, and good manners. When he is not languishing in an absinthe-soaked torpor, or wandering between the worlds, or being irritatingly distracted by the vicissitudes of earthly life, he spends his nights writing furiously, occasionally remembering to shave, bathe, and eat.

  Also by Christopher Courtley:

  TROLL STEW: A STRANGE BREW OF DARK FAIRY TALES AND POEMS FOR ADULTS

  THE TEMPLE OF BAAL-ZEBUB (TALE I OF THE VALRUNA SAGA)

  THE BONE DANCER (TALE II OF THE VALRUNA SAGA)

  Connect with the author online:

  Official Site: https://www.christophercourtley.com

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/courtleymanor

  Facebook: https://facebook.com/courtleymanor

  Blog: https://courtleymanor.blogspot.com

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