Gaunt Town March

By Kat Delarus

creeping darkness
swaddles our souls
we hide without light
to keep us from dying

Longer and longer
the time stretches out
we’ve seen what grows
beyond the horizon

beat does the heart
does the heart of madness
that way lies nothing
familiar or sacred

pitchforks and torches
and flasks of oil
wooden planks and nails
and chunks of stone

there is no way
to stop it from coming
the townsfolk marching
aren’t coming back

beat does the heart
does the heart of madness
that way lies flesh
an abyss that kills

back to the town
we hurry and we scamper
packing our bags
we flee what’s inevitable

quick, take a knife
it’s already here
are we too late?
there’s no time to think

beat does the heart
does the heart of madness
ever growing, ever reaching
Do nothing but flee

beat does the heart
does the heart of madness
in your blood and in your head
it’s far too late

(Art by Tom Brown shows the Bridge of Bottles, which crosses the Gaunt River into Gaunt Town, the oldest part of the main settlement on the island.)

Insidious

A new piece from Keith Errington!

Insidious

On the isle of Hopeless, Maine
The weather is always insane
There’s never rhyme nor reason
Pointless is the weathervane
It’s insidious and perplexing
At the very least it’s very vexing
But there’s one peculiar thing
Whether autumn, summer, or spring
A dangerous weirdness does persist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

The Hopeless Maine Scientific Society
(Not known particularly for its propriety)
Has studied the phenomenon
Using tests of great variety
Despite their efforts most fastidious
All they can say is, “Well, it’s insidious”
Their experts are dumbfounded
Astounded and confounded
Even Arkwright the anthropologist
The mist the mist the mist.

It’s a certain kind of fog
That smells of soggy dog
Weird faces lurk within the gloom
Too many to catalogue
There are eyes and things that hum
And things that brush your bum
Dark tendrils reaching out
Taking hair and casting about
Like a demented hairstylist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

It affects your mood and makes you sad
Or melancholic or occasionally glad
But there’s no escaping its devilment
Stay out too long and you’ll go mad
It gets in your hair
And your underwear
Always growing
Always glowing
A cloud with a Lovecraftian twist
The mist, the mist, the mist.

When returning from the Inn
After all the medicinal gin
You’d better watch your step
And make sure that you’re within
For if you are outside
When the mist it does betide
You’d better beware
You’d better take care
Especially if you’re pissed
The mist, the mist, the mist.

Crustacean improvisation

leaving the scene of the crime.

The hermit crabs have not been told

Of how one end a reed should hold

They do not know to cut and dry

And knowing nothing, do not try.

The flute is narrow, it is so

And down it one large crab might blow

While keenly others play their roles

And scuttle forth to block the holes.

They long for music on the beach

A washed up band lies in their reach

Pray do not tell them as they roam

About the shipwrecked whole trombone.

Alicia Poe – a Hopeless Ghost

I am the ghost of the girl you killed

Over and over when you silenced me

Every time you deprived me of peace

Told me to be nice, say nothing of anything

That is not nice even as it happened to me.

I am the ghost of the girl not allowed

To cry in the night, in pain, in fear.

Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.

I am the ghost of the woman you killed

Over and over, when you denied me

The right to be myself, to have my feelings

When you shut down my thoughts,

Ignored my needs, turned my pain

And my despair into irrelevant nothing.

Locked me in the house for my own good

Then in the attic since I could not be trusted

To act in my own best interests.

Saying only you knew what was right for me

Only you could say what was good and proper.

You said nothing is more tragically romantic

Than the untimely death of a beautiful

Young woman. And how you smiled

When you said that to me.

I am the ghost of the woman you killed

And I have all the time in the world

For my revenge.

(Art by Dr Abbey, poem inspired by the art, and a bit of a snarl at Edgar Allen Poe, who really did say something to the effect that the death of a beautiful young woman was the only real subject for literature)

James Weaselgrease and the bear

The above image comes from The Gathering. The young man on the right is a very young James Weaselgrease (to use my son’s steampunk performance name). He is the child in this story who Salamandra rescues and to whom she gives her bear.

 

James Weaselgrease and the bear

 

She gave me this small toy bear

Torn, battered, restored with care

Softness in my open arms

Best of magic, best of charms.

 

Old toy bear to ward off fear

Wonky face and sewn up ear

Damaged but not yet destroyed

Comforting, my spirits buoyed

 

Courage with a messy face

Saved, repaired and full of grace

Saw who I could choose to be

Found the hope to uplift me.

 

Nights are long and dark and grim

Demons tear us limb from limb

Days are cold and grim and grey

Much to steal your life away.

 

Even in the darkness, light

Find the means to live and fight

Fill this time with something good

Do the best, the most we could.

 

In each tiny action seek

Kindest ways, protect the weak

Every chance there is for joy

All your wits and strength deploy

 

She gave me this bear to hold

Ease my fear and make me bold

Do for others what I can

And this is how my work began.

 

Image at the top by Tom Brown, poem by Nimue, bear by Dr Abbey.

Reverend Davies

Reverend Davies is the father of Owen Davies. He runs the Pallid Rock orphanage, and has a church. Although quite who the church is dedicated to, it may be better not to ask. It features an organ powered by live fish, and there may be a small Elder God living in the rafters.

This piece is set  around Sinners, at which point Reverend Davies has, through a mix of bad luck and his own actions, lost the people who mattered most to him…

The worst feature of grief

Is how things you used to loathe

Begin to haunt you

How your wife fussed over you

Moved things so that you

Could not put your hands on them

The precise way she had

Of closing a door too sharply.

Her only show of anger.

 

The way your son fiddled

Relentlessly, with everything

His insolence, his answering back

His total inability to leave

His dirty socks in a laundry basket

The things of his you sat on.

 

The indecent way she had

Of looking at you, sometimes.

How her mischief enraged you

When it tugged the corner of her mouth.

 

They are gone now

The things you used to loathe

Torture you most, I find.

The boyish, tuneless whistle

I would sell my soul to hear again.

Never to have my collar adjusted

By gentle, affectionate fingers

Never again to be laughed at

By the woman I most wronged.

 

What richness I had

When I thought myself ill-treated.

Spoonwalker by Dr Abbey Masahiro

It sounds to me so botanically beastful

His walking is looking like dancing

And making noise, zee boo, zee boo.

Eye colour changes by temperature.

When rainbows appear, he sings

Songs of the ancient moon.

Rider of storm, rider of wave.

 

 

(Dr Abbey is part of the Hopeless Maine film crew, and slowly being lured into other things, which is what the island tends to do to people – more here  https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2020/05/01/casting-durosimi/  )

Upon arrival in Hopeless

From

The ongoing works of Algernon Lear

(and Pulvis)

(Really Craig Hallam)

 

Upon arrival in Hopeless

 

A veil of mist covers the screaming shore,

smoke pouring into a drowning maw.

A sea of green glass

laced with antique foam

rattles the bones of the beach.

 

The sea tastes the shore and the beach bites back,

splintering hulls and breaking backs.

Hopeless’ dark beauty

looms like a threat,

and a dream sweat prickles the skin.

 

Crawling from the surf to clandestine shore,

paying forth the brine from our lungs,

the island gifts rotten breath,

we arrive in debt

to a ledger writ in abyssal hand.

 

Nightshade

By Craig Hallam

 

 

 

Nightshade

 

Pale ankles buried in the brine,

the sand washing against your roots,

you were timeless there,

the hem of your skirts

floating on the ebb tide.

O, let me never see the ocean again

if it does not caress your sweet self.

 

The wind gave birth to the sea breeze

that it might play in gentle fronds

loosed from your tress.

The scent of wood smoked fish

comes on the wind.

O, let me never breathe again

if your scent is not in the air.

 

With dulcet command the horizon obeys,

the midnight ocean bows.

Blade summons your rich blood,

and shocked arousal

from this onlooking thrall.

O, Nightshade, strike me down.

This life is lived at your behest.

Why Do I Paint Monsters?

 

They say I am veiled as the paintings in my attic

that I keep my life concealed like skeletons beneath white sheets

that only hair pins hold me together and a spinster’s habits

that I am pale because only tentacles touch my heart.

How little they know what goes on in my secret place,

my haven, where I keep my paintbox, my paints, my easel,

which always tells the truth whoever steps from behind the curtain

into the frame and by the steady brush of my hand coalesces.

Why do I paint them? You ask. Why do I keep their faces

emptied out with a candle above as a nod to their puttering souls

lit without a single match by flames that grow ever brighter

as this island gets more hopeless and I grow wiser?

My life has not been easy. Read this in my downturned lips –

this would not have been my first choice, but now they want me

to oversee the rules of a new game I am hiding my damp brushes

and paints away and smiling a small smile like a masquerade.

 

Words by Lorna Smithers, who we welcome to the island with this piece. I have had the honor and pleasure of doing the art for two of her book covers- The Broken Cauldron and Gatherer of Souls. It is beautiful writing of the sort that will change your internal landscape.  Please visit Lorna here.

 

Art- Tom Brown