The internet is a helluva invention. If you could travel time back to the 1940’s and tell someone that you had a device in your pocket that could answer any question with a push of a few buttons, check into flights without being there, and see picture of distant lands in an instant it would blow their minds. (Nevermind the fact that you just traveled time.) A few hundred years earlier you would probably be fixed to a fire and burned at the stake for witchery.
On a particular sleepless night in May, while navigating through the Horror Writers’ Twitter , Instagram account, and finally landing on our Facebook site, I received an instant message at 1:30 AM that one of the HW coconspirators had posted a poem on the page. Always looking for new talent I dove right into the tale and was mesmerized by the diction, the cadence, and the overall story that unfolded. I immediately wrote the author back to which my surprise he returned the message within seconds. Apparently I was not the only person who suffered a case of insomnia that night. After several messages back and forth the late night internet wordsmith and I had become rather acquainted and I invited him to share his work with the HW family and droogs alike. Through the internet I had found a an undiscovered jewel!
George Yesthal is a retired tattoo artist, author, and poet. His subject vary from horror, sci-fi, viking mythology, and even political satire. A renaisance man in every sense of the word. Inspired by Poe, Lovejoy, King, and even Roald Dahl, Yesthal weaves tales of a modern sense but with the rhetoric of a Romantic Movement bard.
Without further ado, with his full permission, I will reproduce George Yesthal’s first posting that he shared with me here for your reading pleasure. I hope that you will read, and re-read it again and again and grow to love it more with each read as much as I have.
-Renfield Rasputin
The Darkenbog
If dusk mayhap shall find you
On the road ‘ere it gets dark,
And owls hoot more often
Than warbles the meadow lark
And up ahead, before you creeps
A cloying and deepening fog
You know you must be brave to pass
The haunted Darkenbog.
You’ve heard the old ones whisper
The chilling tales of yore
Of haints and bogies, goblins too…
Of trolls, evil souls and more.
The witch that turns slow children
Into bugs and slug-eating frogs
She too awaits to kidnap you
In the deep and dank Darkenbog.
The bridge ahead you’ve often crossed
With impunity, sun shining bright.
But now far from town, the sun has gone down
And alone, you shiver with fright.
You’ve been warned what can happen to dawdlers
And so you don’t walk, you don’t jog.
No, you sprint for that bridge for youknow that you may
Fall prey to the cold Darkenbog.
Your heart’s filled with fear for you’re sure that you hear
Something wheezing but still keeping pace.
Something hidden from view, still you know it sees you
And you know that you’re losing the race.
The bridge drawing near, you’re just about htere
You can now hear a splash as it slogs
Up onto the path and you feel your foot grabbed
You’re hauled screaming into Darkenbog.
You awaken to hear something really quite near
But you sit very still just the same.
From a ways down the path you can hear children laugh
And you hear someone calling your name.
As you open your mouth your tongue lashes out
And snares a slug sharing your log
You want to go home but you know beyond doubt.
Your home’s now the cold Darkenbog
-George Yesthal
Please enjoy more of the many works of George Yesthal, see his site http://www.redbubble.com/people/yesman