Becoming Monsters

“…monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

Stephen King

Hi friends,

These next few pieces are all about different forms of monstrosity, focusing primarily on themes of memory and transformation. Hope you enjoy these poems about a witch, a werewolf, a zombie, a ghost, and a boy that just wants to be loved.

Fable

The boy had become a monster

with scaled skin,

and tusks he had grown just Wednesday afternoon.

Mum and dad had stopped looking at him

around the time he started breathing fire.

 When he heard them murmur his name

 along with talk of chains and the dark,

 he fled to the deep forest

where whispers said others like him had made their home.

He met creatures with horns and fangs

that diligently swept leaves from the ground;

a siren who taught him to breathe underwater,

and a mother ogre who kept him warm.

As they broke bread around the fire

and gave thanks to the stars,

the boy realised who the real monsters were.

Story of a Witch

Her body was bruised with expectation,

her knees scraped by grit and guilt

from being dragged through dirt;

Punishment,

for an imagined transgression.

She was christened in a witch hunt

but untied the rope from her own neck,

and wrote a song of retribution

that took them from their beds,

and drowned them in that same dirt.

She wasn’t a witch,

until they made her one.

Pack Animal

Rotted flesh

animated by a stubborn hunger.

Stumbling forward

with the rest of the pack,

it looks down

At torn clothing,

feeling a dull ache at the back of its skull.

A muted recollection

from before the decay,

cut short

by the stink of the living.

The hunger becomes a fever

Until there’s nothing

but the craving

for meat between mottled teeth.

Changed

Moonlight revival

of appetites long suppressed.

Tooth turned to fang,

claws twisting soft flesh,

clear light transformed into red fog.

Nothing,

but the howl and the hunt.

The pain of forgetting,

worse than the mutation.

A Haunting

Gossamer girl,

a transitory visitor.

Enduring quietly,

with a foot in two worlds.

The sting of it, only half remembered.

She traces her footsteps

but finds a hall of mirrors.

Time has disappeared

but still she reaches out

to faces she once knew.

Overlooked,

She haunts herself.