THIRTEEN BLACK ROSES

Gothic Romantic Poetry

By

CHRISTOPHER COURTLEY

Thirteen Black Roses: Gothic Romantic Poetry by Christopher Courtley

Copyright 2013 by Christopher Courtley

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Cover design by Christopher Courtley

http://www.christophercourtley.com

O Rose, thou art sick!

~William Blake

CONTENTS

To A Sick Rose

Descending Angel

Addiction

To Lilith, Queen of Darkness

Medusa

Nosferatu, or Despair

The Ghost

The Comical Tragedy

How Frantically We Clothe Each Naked Day

The Layers of Illusion

My Garden of Proserpine

Wedding Night

No Swan Song

About the Author

To A Sick Rose

My Rose, O thou art sick, but it is IWho wrap myself in shadow to escapeThe noisome day and to thy bosom fly;

Who bite thy lips and from them kisses rape—My clutches desperate, my head a swarm

That buzzes with a thousand sleepless nightsUntil I rest inside thee soft and warm;

My secret Rose, whose crimson bed’s delightsAlone can still the howling of the storm

That rages with a thousand anguished criesAnd spends its fury on thy trembling form

Before it once again begins to riseUp from my core corruption, roiling thick,

Devouring my life—Rose, I am sick!

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Descending Angel

Through the rain’s grey haze I sometimes seeAn angel sail across the night’s deep ocean

Wrapped in sombre swathes of mysteryFeline and ethereal in motion.

Surreal, she glides, with sweeping eyes exoticConcealing more about her than they tell;

In havens strange she weathers storms eroticAnd holds some phantom lover in her spell.

Or perhaps she walks this world unknownAdrift like me upon the seas of time

Wandering deserted streets aloneUntil the morning sun begins its climb.

I’ll never know, nor share my secret pain;She passes, virginal, just like the night

Descending with the dark clouds and the rainTo seize my heart before she takes to flight.

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Addiction

She stalks the shadows of my mindAnd the dreams she leaves behind

Taunt me with her memoryHaunting nightmarish ecstasy.

A sickly lust, a prick of fear—The night descends and brings her here

Naked and untouched by manA moon-white virgin courtesan.

She is all and I am hersAbject slave to a heart that stirs

For no one—so I nightly sitIn paradises counterfeit.

Loving her is poisoned blissHer kiss is death and still I kiss;So banish sun and harsh daylight

And come sweet angel of the night—

Come upon the moonlight’s streamingCome and light my darkest dreaming

Come and fill my veins with pleasure—All I want, and all I treasure.

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To Lilith, Queen of Darkness

There’s a sweet, sharp knowledge only gleaned in the nightFar from the noise and the noisome light

Of day and distraction, formation and fight—The dark and the silence that nurtures delight,

Healing old wounds and soothing the spiteThat attends our struggles and impedes our flight.

Night is for lovers and liers in truthSweetest of tongue and sharpest of tooth;

The eye of the day brings the harshest of lights;So to hell with my days—only give me your nights!

Give me your darkness to nourish my soul;Give me your nakedness, plain, pure and whole—

Give me the sweetness my sharpness desiresAnd give me the sharpness my sweetness requires.

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Medusa

Once greedy for her golden hairI plucked a strand from her fair head,

But fixed in her medusa stareMy feet to her stone floor were wed.

Now ever standing frozen thereImpaled by Cupid’s leaden dart

I watch her with an eyeless glareAnd weigh her with a statue’s heart.

How swiftly once the hours fled,But now they stalk; a lion’s share

Upon my weary soul has fedAnd laid her sordid secrets bare.

Within her chamber bathed in red,Clad only in her golden hair,

As alchemists make gold from leadSo she makes love without a care

To any who will grace her bedAn hour or two and then depart.

One night she looked at me and said:“Ah, what a fragile work of art

You are, my dear.” Then I with dreadPerceived how she could break apart

My body as though it were bread,Crumble to bits my statue’s heart

And crush my frozen eyeless glareTo dust beneath her august tread

For winds to sweep from out her lair.But she just laughed and tossed her head

To kiss me with her golden hairAs turning she went back to bed.

And still she keeps me standing there,A figure neither live nor dead.

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Nosferatu, or Despair

Now once again Despair hath sunkIts rotting teeth into my will,And of my aspirations drunk,

And of my dreams taken its fill.Upon its rank and icy breath

Is borne the stinking waste of yearsInfecting everything, like Death,

Whose robes are steeped in blood and tearsAs stooping over all my cares

It throws long shifting shadows onThe steeply climbing, crumbling stairs

Of my ambitions, almost goneAnd quickly fading from my sight

Into the stalking mists of timeLike corpses drained to leprous whiteDeep in a pit, heaped o’er with lime,

The plague victims of my intent,Those hopes and dreams I once held dear

In slow decay lie impotentAs I do in the grip of fear.

And those inverted creatures, myUnrestful thoughts and nightmares, bring

To life a scream born from a sighAs shadowed night doth give them wing;

A sigh so deep that no abyssNor even the unfathomed sea

Nor even Death’s cold, endless kissCan rival its profundity.

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The Ghost

As I walk the sodden banks of this river of human soulsThat hurry onward to their common destiny

I observe them as they say their lines and play their little rolesAnd dance to the tune of a tragic symphony.

I haunt your world like a ghost mourning the life it lostA shadow watching from the corners of your envied existence

For I cannot cross the river you have crossedAnd so there lies between us an infinite distance.

But sometimes in the ocean depths of your eyesI can see the shimmer of a shining yesterdayLike something you just couldn’t exorcise

That left its silver lining amid the grey.

As through this carnival of souls I move unhurriedThe baggage of my former life left far behindGone but not forgotten, though deeply buried

A priceless treasure none will ever find

In the masked and painted faces of the figures passing byI read a thousand books that say the same damned thing

A thousand different ways, and with a lonely sighI seek the solace solitude will bring.

So here I stand alone, and here alone I stayI cannot enter your world, nor will you enter mine

My one remaining hope is that one dayThey will once again collide and recombine.

And sometimes in the ocean depths of your eyesI can see the shimmer of a shining yesterdayLike something you just couldn’t exorcise

That left its silver lining amid the grey

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The Comical Tragedy

we bring our demons with uslying as we go

inviting all our evils invisible transparent show

and ever so obscurethe exorcising of the curenever to be grasped by us

who hold ourselves so clean and pure

as we primp and prance and poseparading in our emperors clothes

pointing fingers in secureassessment of each others woesarrayed in naked faults we grinand snicker at our fellows sin

for as without us so withinthe fun house mirrors we abjure

too tempting is the ancient lureto gossip and to some add viceall guilt with virtues to assure

that we are all so very niceto bring our demons with usin this traveling circus showacting out a freakish mythos

crying as we go

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How Frantically We Clothe Each Naked Day

How frantically we clothe each naked dayWith every ornament that comes our wayIn masques and revelries adorn our time

Ridiculously prance and pantomime

Like clowns who with their antics hope in vainTo drown out for one moment all the pain

That shrieks beneath its costume nonethelessAs in its former poverty of dress.

The ghost of winter in our dream of springStill casts its shadow over everything—

The phantom at the ball who does his bestTo make himself a most unwelcome guest.

We make a show of shrugging off our caresBut laughter is a mask that trembling wears.

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The Layers of Illusion

The world and we are semblance and no more;Beneath each different mask indifference lies—

The layers of illusion we adoreConceal a dull despair that never dies.

Behind the masquerade that life puts onThere yawns a vast but empty banquet hallWhere echoes of a chorus long since gone

Give rise to forms like shadows on the wall.Loud pageants pass, and thrill, annoy, or bore;

The games we play at best serve to amuse.Why strive to win when no one’s keeping score

And more to gain is simply more to lose?While we in relays run our bootless race

To build our lies upon another’s lies,Our weary feet can only serve to traceWide circles in the sands of enterprise.

As clouds drift by, and neither stand nor fallSo sail we on to some imagined shoreUntil time strips us bare and of us all

Makes clumsily an end, and then no more.Thus frenziedly we whirl as in a dream

Through shifting seasons in their endless roundWhere all we know of things is how they seem,To spokes of Fortune’s wheel forever bound.So scorn the world as but a painted whore,Or love her—only pay her and have done.

The lies we lived, the truths by which we sworeWill lie with her and in her and be one.

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My Garden of Proserpine

Sleep’s the soothing balm for scathing time;To lie awash in dreams, half-waking stillBetween the never-land of bliss sublimeAnd lucid labyrinths of what-you-will;

Such sleep is sweet. But bitter gall is better,For honey-slow, this syrup sly as sin

From its first slinking serpent-subtile letter(Kiss-shaped whisper, worm of saccharine)

Slips in, a silken silver murderessTo shrink from as I never have from pain—

That heroine of Nod whose cold caressOnce drew from tainted blood the sons of Cain.

So you slip in, my garden of delight,Golgotha, grinning skull of pale-horsed Death,Through scarlet tears in skin once virgin-white,With flowers, rot, and grave-dirt on your breath.

Such sleep’s a comfort I cannot endure;A cipher like a circle to confine

And pin me to your wheel of cause and cure;Your milk and honey and your sour wine.

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Wedding Night

The dark night softly calls to me and beckons me to bedWith promises like sand grains tinkling through an hourglassAnd whispers of sweet nothing upon which to rest my head;

A pillow of oblivion beneath the even grass.

As dusk had drawn its velvet curtain on the world’s unrestThe veil over my eyes was lifted; darkness shone like light

And then a lifetime’s longing rose from deep within my breastAs I prepared to give myself to my eternal night.

How soothing and seductive, these caresses formed of bliss;The life that once entranced is ravished now by Death’s allure,

For he has breathed into my bosom with his endless kissA shadow of that consummation I cannot abjure.

No more is time my enemy; I’ve put away all pride;Hence even hope has flown, with all the burden of my cares—

And now with pure abandon will my soul, that joyous brideEmbraced by her Beloved, shed this garment that she wears.

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No Swan Song

I have no swan song; words desert me nowThat I have lost my youthful poet’s soul.

I have no will to sing one anyhow;My heart’s as empty as a beggar’s bowl.Such poor unhappy lines as I might pen

Cannot but show the dearth of feeling there,As they fall flat and fizzle out again

And again, without their former flair.And though they aptly show my poverty

Of spirit, passion, and creative fire,This alone does not make poetry,

No more than ashes make a funeral pyre.

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About the author:

Christopher Courtley lives in the vast, ancient, crumbling haunted house of his own imagination, perched precariously upon the windswept edges of the cliffs of insanity. There he spends his absinthe-fueled nights writing feverishly, whilst Nightgaunts dog his every step into the deepest regions of the netherworld of his darkest dreams and naked succubi call to him with lurid siren songs that would wake the dead. By day he serves fish in a supermarket.

Also by Christopher Courtley:

DARK TALES OF VAMPIRES, WITCHES & WEREWOLVES

Read excerpts at http://christophercourtley.com/darktales.html

TROLL STEW: A ST RANGE BREW OF DARK FAIRY TALES AND POEMS FOR ADULTS

Read excerpts at http://www.christophercourtley.com/#stewsample

THE TEMPLE OF BAAL-ZEBUB (TALE I OF THE VALRUNA SAGA)

THE BONE DANCER (TALE II OF THE VALRUNA SAGA)

For more info on this ongoing sword & sorcery/weird fiction series, including excerpts, a sneak preview of the next volume, a glossary & world map, please visit its official page at:

http://www.christophercourtley.com/valrunasaga.html

Connect with the author online:

Official Site: http://www.christophercourtley.com

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/christophercourtleyTwitter: http://twitter.com/courtleymanor

Facebook: http://facebook.com/courtleymanorBlog: http://courtleymanor.blogspot.com

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