Art by Dominic Black: http://webtentacle.blogspot.com/ – click to enlarge

{for my dear brother, a certain Mr. Hopfrog, Esq.}

(then)(by the light of an East Coast moon…)
after the beans.
after coffee.
after the day’s vigorous adventure in sunlight, the walk, enjoying the blue. a pen in silver hands, prizing. dreaming—‘wholly overruled by the newer and more bewildering urge.’—from (and laced with) mathematics, and physics, and hints… ‘Subterranean region beneath placid New England village, inhabited by (living or extinct) creatures of prehistoric antiquity and strangeness’ . . . ‘Lonely bleak islands off N.E. coast. Horrors they harbour—outpost of cosmic influences’ . . . ‘A very ancient colossus in a very ancient desert. Face gone—no man hath seen it’ . . . words, aware—of history and science, and ancient fruits (and the embrace of Eternity) . . . ‘There was the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers – the “Black Man” of the witch cult’ . . . astonished words. of cellars and cobwebs, of the inquiries of a madman. the hunger of the engine in the fountain burns in the nest. winter. telling farther. shaking with the moments when the clock faces the stars. the race to the gate. leaping with fast dreams. today. yesterday.  a cold year (wrapped in beauty and loneliness) that disappears in a stream of years. words. dreams. words. words, lost and found… and melted.

dreaming (dusk)(shadows)(dark corners) . . . revising.

in the tomb. dreaming. and other tales of terror . . .

(now)(by the light of a West Coast moon…)
after coffee.
after Thai food.
after singing along with the new Streisand cd—twice. the hungry hands (of the poet) at the keyboard. mining (commitment). deeper and deeper to emerge with landmarks. words. each dreaming of the master… each in sorrow and ecstasy, formed by heart. words. no make-up today. {ashton}ished WORDS—rising, leaping (soon to be thrust into the hands of The Editor), fast as midnight explored. fingers in the unwound mists of a woodland asylum, eyes in the master’s Commonplace Book. more words—‘He kissed the instrument, then held it to the moon, that globe of dead refraction’ . . . , more phrases— ‘Autumn is my favorite time of year; it heralds absolutely the death of torturous summer’ . . . ‘She placed her hands together in a semblance of prayer’ . . . more (legions of deliberateness, each raindrop-tongue pulsing) grow (in Sesqua Valley)(and other haunts). words, stitching blight on the doorways of abandoned streets. blue-veined words, caging the empty-handed prayers of the garden. carved words that must weight in. sign and sentence, lamps in the witch-house! (tearswept) words. choirs of words, gut and reflexes that won’t hide, or stop… the stain of dark blossoms covering the page. words, plucked (from the master’s territories) by the velocity of his nets, and piled high on his altar of Lovecraftian dreams . . .
face pressed to words, roots (of death and decay and dark black earth) and raven stars. briars—burdens, shaking with burdens. the movement (every knot and gesture lit) of association and choice. words.
flares.
bells.
bells. and smoke fermenting. bells. thrust into technique, banging on the strictures the stars possess.
bells.
bells. the luminous baptism—cooking genesis in the decomposition of apocalypse.
words.
wild. decadent.
falling. shedding restraint. dancing…
dancing—
FASTER.
words. nouns and periods, and the commas (that map caves, and understand night infused with crossings), all—the recipe of every leaf, all—loaded with dread. italics diagnosing the rent of blood and butcher’s bill. gang & timber! south, all the way to “There!” with claws in the game. wordshed—strata-phrase, uncork the tears. wordshed—lifting dauntless verbs. words! that light the doom felt last night in Sesqua, to prowl the warrens of Kingsport with kisses of corruption. witness words from hands that reek of smoke. a swirl of thorns hunting marrow . . . words. gathered. the mirrors and thunder of unshuttered words (glowing and trembling)(each a drum and blade and portal), at the threshold with their avid flint harvesting observations of moor and orbit and afflicted memory. words (explorations and ecstasies… built for whomever listens)… and tangled, uncommon yesterdays (wrapped in beauty… and loneliness) (like those of the master) that cannot disappear in the stream of years.

dreaming (dusk)(shadows)(dark corners). . . revising . . .

in the tomb of the master. dreaming. and other tales of terror.

{Jon Hassell “Last Night the Moon Came”}

Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., is the author of the novels The Orphan Palace (Chomu Press 2010) and Nightmare’s Disciple (Chaosium 1999), and he has written many short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including “Weird Fiction Review”, “Crypt of Cthulhu”, and “Lovecraft eZine”, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, S. T. Joshi’s Black Wings (I and III; PS Publishing) and A Mountain Walked (Centipede Press 2014), Ross Lockhart’s Book of Cthulhu (Night Shade), and many anthologies edited by Robert M. Price. His highly–acclaimed short story collections, Blood Will Have Its Season, SIN & ashes, and Portraits of Ruin, were published by Hippocampus Press in 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively. He edited A Season in Carcosa and The Grimscribe’s Puppets (Miskatonic River Press), and collections by Ann K. Schwader (The Worms Remember) and John B. Ford. He is at work on two new collections of weird fiction, Stained Translations, and The Protocols of Ugliness, both edited by Jeffrey Thomas. You can find his blog at: http://thisyellowmadness.blogspot.com/

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Story illustration by Dominic Black.

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