The Darkenbog, by George Yesthal

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 Darkenbog10463-bigthumbnail

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