The Candied Treats of the Necronomnomnomicon
A thousand ships are shipwrecked, adrift on stygian shores,
Their billowing sails all stripped and gone, but he’ll need a thousand more,
Until he’s all the white ones, they’re the ones he needs the most –
To sew them in the costume of a thousand-foot-high ghost
He didn’t eat the sailors, he left them all to drown,
He’s saving space for candy which he’ll greedily gulp down,
In his house at R’lyeh, dread Cthulhu is dead keen,
To go out trick-or-treating on this special Halloween.
Shub-Niggurath is coming too, he’s dressing as a bat.
If Hastur’s mum will let him out, he will be wearing that
flat-headed outfit he insists is one of Frankenstein.
“That’s the doctors name”, they all maintain – Hastur’s so asinine.
Yog-Sothoth can’t come tonight, he’s feeling rather peaky,
Stabbed by some investigators, that made him somewhat leaky,
Curse his vulnerability to that damned enchanted sword,
He’s at the local hospital, stuck in Charles Dexter Ward.
It’s a rare old treat for Elder Gods, this special celebration.
Herbert West’s prepared the drinks, a special green libation
“With qualities”, he proudly boasts, “of great rejuvenation”.
(Presented in a punch-bowl full of green illumination).
And if that band of Elder Gods end up upon your street
And you are faced with that grave choice, I urge you to say “Treat”.
Be sure to be insistent as you won’t be asked again –
A trick from Cthulhu and his pals can render men insane.
Halloween ends; Our Elder Gods are all clutching at their chests
To shed this heartburn and belly-ache will take a lengthy rest.
Cavernous bellies full of jellies, candies, chocolate, cake and pie
That, which is now full of sweets, can now eternal lie.
The Strangest Thing has Happened
(A poem adapted from a short story of mine)
The strangest thing has happened in the PrimeGen Research Station
as a lifetimes worth of study, enquiry and investigation
looks like it may just finally be coming to fruition
to the glee of every gathered engineer, scientist and logician.
Their detractors now stay silent, for they have been proved wrong
By the pluck and bloody-mindedness of this assembled throng
who even after failure remained faithful to the cause.
The type when asked "Why do it?" simply answer "Just because."
The alarm that roused them all's switched off, to stop their ears from aching.
A science experiment one hundred- million long years in the making.
Trembling claws the size of moons rub tired, sun-sized eyes.
The assembled scientists gather round as the defrosted sample dries
And there it is; a perfect sphere, devoid of imperfection
A tiny ball of textured green and glistening blue reflection
Assembled voices "oooh" and "aaaah" in self-congratulation
and empty wine glasses are refilled all primed for celebration.
Sample EAR-7H hangs there, a flawless gleaming jewel.
The research head stares beaming and announces, "Scientists, you'll
Be remembered for this breakthrough, long after you've all gone."
He speaks too soon, an alarm sounds – something has gone wrong.
A blackened tiny oil-like speck appears there on the crust
And tendrils of it grow and spread much to their disgust
Corruption's quick and total, and they're past the time for panic.
The tiny living fractal flaws both viral and organic.
Without a word it's taken, a hastily sketched proposal
that EAR-7H's a failure, fit only for disposal.
Into the stasis chamber, this experiment is done.
It floats with other failures round a tiny yellow sun.
A success in all other regards; aesthetic and tectonic.
EAR-7H would be perfect, if not for the life upon it.
Causal Determinism and the effect on complex open systems
If you’re a gamer, go grab some dice
Some multi-coloured ones with the funny shaped sides
Or go borrow them from a nerd or a geek
With the promise you’ll return them by the end of the week.
Get a plain piece of paper, or if you must, lined
Because this’ll be where your characters defined
Your strengths and your weaknesses, inventory too,
So grab your black pen. Or alternatively, blue.
So now you’re prepared to embark on this game,
And the first thing to do’s give your character a name.
I insist that it’s male – it’s a mandatory clause.
But if you’re male already, then you have to use yours.
So, there next to name, you can mark down your gender
(Which we’ve established is male, which isn’t meant to offend or
Disturb all you people who don’t fit that forte
But to choose something else would be really quite naughty)
And we’ll quickly move on to an uncommon stat,
Your sexual “leanings”, let’s leave it at that.
Is fancying blokes, women, neither or both your true fate?
That said, I insist that you write down that you’re “straight”.
And now to the step that can upset a few.
The colour of your skin – your pigment, your hue.
It may seem like an odd stat in this particular equation,
So we’ll simplify things by just putting “Caucasian”.
So turns out in the end that we didn’t need those dice
And we’re left with a character that’s turned out quite nice
So we can start with some adventuring fun…
Ah, actually, turns out you’ve already won.
Skulduggery
"Oh Skull, you are so beautiful"
she murmured, with a sigh.
But the skull, bare, bleached and lifeless,
Could offer no reply.
On waking, she would talk to it.
tell it about herself,
But the skull, a mere framework of bones,
Just sat there on the shelf.
In mornings, she would sing to it,
Songs joyous and bleak,
But the skull, as deaf as it was dead,
could offer no critique.
At lunchtimes, she would cook for it;
fine repasts, and such.
But the skull, bereft of appetite,
would leave the meal untouched.
In afternoons, she would dance for it.
She'd pirouette and spin,
But the skull could only lay there, smiling
With a forced white rictus grin.
In evenings, she would lay with it,
Caress the skin-stripped bone.
She'd hug it for mere company,
to help feel less alone.
"Oh Skull, you are so beautiful"
she'd whisper as night fell,
but no response would ever come
from that vacant bony shell.
Her hair, from red to grey it went,
Her songs came out less eager,
The dancing slowed to a slow waltz,
Food portions grew more meagre.
Until one day, she rose from bed,
But paused before the shelf.
"You are a skull, and nothing else."
she said, pleased with herself.
"You give me nothing but disdain.
I'll dance for you no more."
She spat and cursed and grabbed the skull
and placed it in a drawer.
The outside world can be quite harsh,
To the weak and the naïve
And a cruel man can exploit such souls
through the expert lies they weave.
The name he gave her was the only truth
he gave about himself.
He'd wend his way into her good books
and drain her of her wealth.
As time went on, this roguish knave
begin to win her heart.
"My love, I want for nothing more
than for us to never part."
She took the man into her home,
devoid of apprehension.
They'd chat and dance. She'd cook for him,
Convinced of his good intention.
He'd wander round the house at night,
This knave – scum of the earth -
Counting all her worldly goods
and totting up her worth.
One morning, as she lay asleep,
a drawer was disturbed.
The gleaming white skull was revealed,
The knave shrieked, quite perturbed.
She awoke, and ran to see what thing
had irked her lover so.
His eyes ablaze, he screamed at her
"This cursed thing must go!"
"No!" she cried, "The thing must stay!
To me it means the world."
"It wasn't a request," he snarled,
"You'll do as told, my girl."
Seeing his mask gone, for the first time,
She felt a pang of doubt.
"Of course, my dear. Just as you asked.
Before the day is out."
He raised his fist as though to strike,
to her horror and surprise.
But left her there, holding the skull
and staring in its eyes.
"I've cooked your favourite meal," she said.
He grabbed it, simply glaring.
Little did he know that it was laced
with a box-worth of Warfarin.
"Oh Skulls, you are so beautiful"
she murmured, with a sigh.
But the skulls, bare, bleached and lifeless,
Could offer no reply.
Dot.
Frayed dried twig fingers knead lumps of pink matter,
Into a bloodied straw mass that grows fatter and fatter.
The donor, a victim that life has eschewed,
Her cold flesh as scarlet as her ruby red shoes.
A needle, a thread – open straw scars are sewed,
as blood drips to the bricks of the long amber road.
Then the murderer sings, with a cheery refrain
‘"If I Only" No longer, now that I have my brain.’
The Thing from Another World
Warning: Contains spoilers - however, it's a thirty-five year old movie, so you've got no excuse if you haven't seen it yet :)
Toppling towards Earth,
the place of our birth,
is something burning bright like a furnace.
It’s an alien vessel,
which at a rough guess will
plummet out of control to the surface.
There are few places parkier
than the depths of Antarctica,
where the landscape is nothing but snow.
But then something of note, a
loud helicopter rotor
of a chopper that’s hovering low.
They’re in hot pursuit
of a stray Malamute
but keep failing to hit with their gun.
The Norwegians are frustrated
and get quite agitated when
it reaches Outpost thirty-one.
The chopper lands on a verge as
the gunner emerges
and pulls out a grenade which he’d stowed.
The throw’s fucked up a treat
and it lands at his feet
and the pilot and chopper explode.
With reckless abandon
He keeps shooting at random,
gibbering, clearly off his head.
As stray bullets fly by,
Bennings is caught in the thigh,
and Garry shoots the Norwegian stone dead.
MacReady and Doc. Copper
head off in their chopper
and find that the Norwegian base is
just a charred shell that’s filled
with dead bodies, as well
as a humanoid corpse with two faces.
They bring it from there
for their biologist, Blair.
“This thing isn’t human,” he proposes.
and meanwhile the mutt
confirms somethings afoot,
as the bloody thing metamorphoses.
Whilst their dogs buy the farm,
MacReady pulls the alarm
and Childs turns the dogs into toast
Blair checks out the corpse
“This is alien, of course,
and can perfectly mimic its host”.
“It’s from an alien race
come from deep outer space
and we can’t let it get out of here.
If it reaches civilization,
It’ll mean all our damnation.
Earth’ll be assimilated in just a few years.”
Bennings dies by cremation,
caught mid-transformation,
and they’re forced to lock Blair in the shed.
With an axe he went crazy, Oh,
and chopped up the radio
and killed all the sled dogs stone dead.
Copper says “With our blood,
a simple test should
reveal the alien now rather than later.”
But the blood stores are trashed,
al the samples left smashed.
It’s clear now that there is a traitor.
The biologist Fuchs
says that he’ll take a look,
and that he’ll continue Blair’s studies.
But later that night
of him there’s no sight
so venture outside, do his buddies.
They find Fuch’s corpse burnt black,
and so Windows heads back
in order to go raise the alert.
Nauls too, is deflated
fearing his friend assimilated
when he finds a scrap of MacReady’s torn shirt.
As the team congregate
to debate MacReady’s fate,
he appears with explosives, quite stressed.
“I’ll blow you to bits,
If you attack me, you shits.”
(Norris suffers a cardiac arrest).
Without hesitation, they try
defibrillation
The outcome for Norris looks bleak
but to their disbelief
his stomach sprouts teeth
and teaches Copper a hands-off technique.
The mutated fellow
is toasted like a marshmallow
although one you wouldn’t dare digest
“Windows, gather everyone round
and tie them all down.
We’re going to try out a test.”
Clark, who fears for his life,
goes for him with a knife,
and MacReady just shoots the man dead.
They’re all stunned into silence
by this act of violence
having seen their friend shot in the head.
“Guys” said MacReady,
“I think I’ve got a theory.
The alien just wants to survive.
if we can just determine,
who’s a host to this vermin,
then we might just stay alive.”
Everyone tied and seated,
a copper wire’s heated
and placed into samples of blood.
But when the wire tip was probin’
Palmer’s Haemoglobin
it leapt off as far as it could.
With little advance warning,
Palmer’s now transforming
as tentacles sprout from his head
Windows hesitates to flame him,
and death comes to claim him
and MacReady has to burn them both dead.
Garry’s been through the wringer,
He feels loathe to linger, so
it’s only fair that he seems a grouch.
“You’ve been through a lot,
but I would rather not
spend Winter tied to this fucking couch”
With Childs left to guard,
the others head to the yard
in order to go and test Blair.
They open his shed
and find they’ve all been misled.
The alien has tunnelled out of there.
Though they thought him Mammalian,
turns out Blair is an alien
and the blighter’s given them the slip
He’s been scavenging equipment
which is for his ship meant,
and has part-built a makeshift space ship.
Garry looks all forlorn.
“The Generator’s gone”
“Is there any way we can fix it?”,
MacReady asks with a frown.
Garry stares at the ground,
“No, I meant as in somebodies nicked it”
“Oh, bugger, shit and damn,
I know the things plan.”
MacReady states, with some consternation.
“We’ll all freeze to death,
and we’ll breathe our last breath –
it’ll be safe whilst it’s in hibernation”
The most hopeful prognosis
was to lay the explosives
agreed the remaining three guys
The dynamite was placed
(and Blair melts Garry’s face)
but then came the biggest surprise.
A vast tentacled Blair
bursts out into the air
popping open like some vile haemorrhoid
But with some dynamite (the last),
MacReady triggers the blast
And the base and the beast are destroyed.
As the flames all burn higher,
MacReady sits by the fire
as Childs reappears with a wry smile.
They can do nothing but watch
as they both share some Scotch.
“Why don’t we both just wait here a while.”
A Squamous Man
Obscene angles,
On dreams landscape desolate -
will Night-gaunts make a meal of me yet?
In Innsmouth’s only bar,
a squamous man.
Why risk losing your sanity
when you're destined to be
an Elder Thing’s treat?
I would escape tonight,
but I haven't any arms to bear.
That man is so gruesome
from some kind of loathsome nightmare.
Arrrggh! A Deep One in the bar,
he’s screaming in my face
and hits me with a swing.
He knows so many arcane things
He knows so much about dread things
I would escape tonight,
but I haven't any arms to bear.
That man is so gruesome
from some kind of loathsome nightmare.
La, la-la, la-la, la-la, a squamous man
Oh, la-la, la-la, la-la, a squamous man
Arrrggh! A Deep One in the bar,
he’s screaming in my face
and hits me with a swing.
He knows so much about dread things
He knows so many eldritch things
He knows so many dreadful things...
(To be sung to the tune of "This Charming Man" by The Smiths - With apologies to both Howard Philips Lovecraft and Steven Patrick Morrissey)
Alas, Ceefax - we hardly knew ye
You were the last of the Teletext family to go
Oracle saw it coming, as far as we know
You'd been there on our tellies since '74
but the BBC Red Button meant you were needed no more
You were state of the art in a far simpler age,
when we were happy to read news page.. by.. slow.. bloody.. page
The wonders of typing in eight eighty eight
to watch telly in silence when staying up late
You were our early web (and sometimes a godsend)
from a day when TV used to actually end
but now just like Oracle and its cousin Prestel
you're confined to the scrapheap of history as well
Your primary colours on my screen I'll miss
without you in my life there is something amiss
Another aged beeb worker who has fell to the axe;
Into 8 bit heaven we commit you, Ceefax.