The Resident Poet Pages

 

Pete Kelly

 

In 2014, the Dracula Society Committee created the honorary post of Society "Poet in Residence".

 

The fifth incumbent is Pete Kelly.

 

These works have appeared in our Society magazine Voices from the Vaults, and many of them have also been presented "live" by their author at Society events.

 

Please be aware that these works are the property of the author, and should not be reproduced elsewhere without permission.

 

To read the works of our other Poets in Residence click on their names below -

 

Cardinal Cox  Tina Rath  Matt Thomsitt  Patricia Burton

 

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Howl Alukah

 

Slowly rising from behind a tree line

Looms the moon like a glowing eye

Across its face flies a winged silhouette

Soon disappeared to the darkened sky

 

In the quiet stillness undisturbed

The eternal sleep of buried bones.

As a blanket of fog laps and curls

Against formed ranks of gravestones

 

Beyond the walls of consecrated ground

Dwellers of the nocturnal come alive

From within the earth to tree-top canopy

Safe within superstition they thrive.

 

From the depths of a wood they gather

With eyes of rubies on fire in the dark

To the edge of two worlds they approach

Drawn by the will of an ancient matriarch.

 

Raised heads to the sky see a figure flying

Above the church spire swooping earthbound

Upon landing wings of a great mane retract

As wolves howl ‘Alukah’ in a joyous resound.

 

The first transformed from flesh of humankind

A scourge birthed in the age of Babylon

She now is mother to births of the immaculate

Those buried without God’s protection.

 

Outside the walls of the graveyard there lies

One such interred ostracised in death’s languor

A suicide who in life with illness of mind, suffered

While in death religion denied him a saviour.

 

While Alukah overlooks with calm anticipation

Wolves dig per fervidly as claws churn the earth

A scraping sounds as their goal is reached

And all is ready for this wretched soul’s rebirth.

 

Reaching in, the casket lid is wrenched and cast aside

Revealing a man with blazing eyes of yellow, staring

Pupils focus, his mouth opens with a rasping breath

Alukah, with an outstretched hand smiles, beckoning.

 

Howls resound all around as the wood comes alive

Filling the air thick with incantations of summoning.

Rising from the grave he floats darkly angelic

In readiness, as one more to this communion is coming.

 

All eyes look to the church as the door swings open

From the darkened galilee a priest appears.

Gripped reverently in both hands a crucifix

A symbol created to relieve those of guilt and fears.

 

He reaches the gateway of the graveyard

Met by Alukah smiling as if to an old friend

Caressing the cross she kisses his cheek

With affection shown in a stroke of her hand.

 

By the untamed nature between light and dark

Such beings were spawned from human kind

Vying over mortals who became a multitude

So an accord they struck to corral them to a single mind.

 

Create the evil to fear, while offering protection

Keeping the masses malleable in a mindful enclosure

While a symbol of faith with a simple inversion

Serves to remind them of their fallible nature.

 

Immortality is the cross these two bear

Never to be as they once were in a life once mortal

Protecting the boundaries of balance

Never to be released through death’s portal.

 

In a final act of initiation, kneels the new born

With a hand of blessing  placed upon his head

Rising solemnly the priest nicks his own neck

An offering to feed in the unity of the Undead.

 

With the song of dawn echoing under a paling sky

Beneath wind rustled trees, all melt away but one

For he must tend to priestly duties in the church

Playing his role within the walls of holy protection.

​

 

In a Forest Lost

 

Lost in a forest nightmare

Where the wind steals your cries

While trees whisper your name

Planted reasoning wilts and dies.

 

Clinging sweat beads glisten

Bejewel a furrowed brow

Laying like seeds of fear

From beneath a mind ploughed.

 

Hope is starved to skeletal

A weakened will lays down

Eyes close to embodied dread

As a presence circles round.

 

Arresting terror is hypnotic

A tongue glides up your neck

Body hairs bristle, skin prickles

Erotic in the intimacy of death.

 

Embraced in surrender

You exhale your last

Drained is your essence

The blood of your past.

 

Through death’s door reborn

A heart without guilt or pain

A scream builds from within

Released, never heard again.

 

Crawling, clawing walls

Ascending humanity’s pit

From earth you are birthed

Clear of roots that constrict.

 

Breaking free of the forest

Returning to a world, you see

As it was, distant and cold

Though now you are hungry.

​

 

Bridge the Darkness

 

In conscious collapse

To sleeping fantasy,

nightly dreams creep

Into a shapeless periphery.

 

Serene within the infinite.

Silent, yet breathing,

On a mycelium thread,

A void expands.

 

Without hope’s horizon

Sightless in nothingness

Seeking tendrils reach to

Bridge the darkness.

 

Within cranial cages

Inflamed skies of the mind

Coalesce into nightmare

Where virtue is left in demise.

 

A Wellspring of desire

Caresses a soft, slender neck

Time Pulses relentlessly

A fantasy on fire.

 

Emblazoned eyes stare hypnotically.

Hunger slavers from an aching mouth,

As needle-like teeth penetrate

And blood flows.

 

Death’s whisper expires

And a haunting fear

Screams as dawn's crimson sun

arises in a bloodied tear.

 

​

Children of Lilith

 

Chaotic tip-tapping of water dripping

From roof-topped mausoleums of sleep

Orderly footsteps join with the clamour

As darkened windows seemingly weep.

 

Rain turns to a mizzle that, like tiny flies

Swarm within the glow of lamplight

Drifting on a wind that penetrates deep

Except for this lone walker of the night.

 

Upon a wall surveying sits a cat

With bristled fur cursing indignation

In a moment, silenced into fearful retreat

By the figure’s simple hand motion.

 

Adorned in a hooded coat tight like skin

Emanating siren-like whispers and sighs.

Echoing footsteps along the empty street

Now cease with the sound of a baby’s cry.

 

In a room filled with memories salvaged

A fallen mother of circumstance, cast out.

Worn pictures of happiness covet a past

From a life once rich now without.

 

The slow tick-tock of a clock on the wall

Seems to meter footsteps heard outside

Growing louder echoing through her mind

Spiralling down to where buried fears reside.

 

Aroused from paralysis by her child’s cries

Comes instinct to protect from harmful intent

She hears s a scratching of claws drawn across glass

Until suddenly the window explodes and fragments.

 

An ominous chill silence wafts through curtains parting,

As in glides a terrifying beauty

She that has bewitched men since time of creation

Stealer of new born and their souls of purity.

 

A face of alabaster, white hair writhing snake like

Her soul piercing eyes burn into the mother’s

With a whip like movement a fatal blow

Claws tear flesh opening crimson rivers.

 

Looking down smiling at the baby in the crib

Licking the mother’s blood from her fingers

Another to take as her coat peels away

Revealing others where their light lingers.

 

Risen from the crib swathed in luminescence

Ripped from existence leaving just a shadow

The baby’s essence subsumed to the Undead

As a silhouette falls to rest upon the pillow

 

Lilith smiles with pleasure as her coat embraces

The new voice joining the whispers and sighs

With this consummation comes her need to feed

Staring hungrily at the bed where her victim lies.

 

Sweeping up the mother by the nape of her neck

Like a rag doll without fight to resist she hangs,

Teeth plunge, eyes close to a flood of blood

Flowing to satiate as deeper sink her fangs.

 

Discarded as unwanted detritus is the drained corpse

Alone in death without a friend to grieve

In reverie of whispers and sighs, another soul taken

Like the exhale of a last breath Lilith takes her leave.

 

 

​

Where Echoes Do Not Sound

 

Crowned upon a precipice

A castle of ruinous aspect

Empty except for shadows

Its soul long departed.

 

Spectral moonlight accentuates

Though does not penetrate

Eyeless windows of abyss

Cold, staring and desolate.

 

A ghostly silence exudes decay

Cadaverous trees stand petrified

Drained of life into rancid earth

Poisoned by corruption personified.

 

Gripping with clawing thorns

The smothering creepers snake

Embracing in a tightly hold

Till the walls should break

 

Through arteries of corridors

Where once life flowed

A wind howls and whispers

Voices of souls, deathly cold.

 

As light is consumed by the dark

Breath succumbs to oppressive air

Cobwebs cling loosely swaying

In unholy stench of atmosphere.

 

A cavernous void with arches ribbed

Where echoes do not sound

Frenzied vermin feast and gorge

At piled corpses of a mound

 

Bones clothed with hanging flesh.

Skulls mime hysteric laughter

Above a grim pyre of the dead

Lies one they called master.

 

He exhales no vapour with every breath

Though born human, is colder than death

Long unheard, a heart’s beating resonance

Sleeping to await an end to silence.

 

​

 

Lord of the Flies

 

Gruesomely howls the wind

As a ghastly Gregorian chant,

Upon a window pane flailing

Tree branches rap discordant

 

Manic shadows dance to a din

Eerily about a moonlit wall,

As a door warps and groans

Seemingly soon to buckle.

 

Alone in bed with knees drawn up

Arms wrapped round for comfort,

Desperate eyes search the room

For escape from this horror

 

With a suddenness all is still

Slowly the door creaks open wide,

In the dark a figure framed

Silently glides to her bedside.

 

Into a pillow sinking further

All hope is gradually undone,

As a whispering voice imparts

Nowhere to run little one.

 

Tips of a clawed hand glint

With a swift and silent strike,

Inhaled is her scream of pain

The bouquet of fear is drug like

 

From the doorway a deep drone

As an intense darkness it looms,

Separating into countless flies

Swarming into the bedroom.

 

Fearfully wiping them from wounds

Though replaced they are instantly,

Sobbing within the futility

She is finished with all that is worldly.

 

Lost is the wherewithal to repel

As with each slash new wounds bloom,

Disappearing under a seething mass

Her outline shrinks, her flesh consumed.

 

Left are the bones to collect

For in mortality they defy,

Such totems are required

When you are Lord of the flies.

 

 

​

I Am The Night

 

From below a graveyard, derelict

I depart the company of worms

Mindless to all in their activity

Such relentless consumers of dirt

 

Night takes me in its embrace

As higher I ascend in flight

Free from my earthly prison

Though, a sanctuary from light.

 

A blanket of glittering diamonds

Beneath me the city lights glow

With sprawling arterial streets

Where such blood vessels flow.

 

I frequent thresholds of shadow

Within alleyways of dark abyss

Bodies of sustenance walk by

As a spider I await with patience.

 

Life’s thrill seekers of dark places

Ever travelling a razor's edge

Voraciously consuming taboos

Daring to lean out from the ledge.

 

All curious and sassy she enters the alley

Flirting with death like some femme fatale

Eagerly wanting what she thinks I can give

Till I reveal what I will with a canine smile.

 

Her swaggering intrigue melts away

As fear collapses a countenance

So too all prior self-possession

As pitifully she begs for existence.

 

With my finger pressed upon her lips

I influence a mindless compliance

Free from any thoughts of escape

She awaits to serve my subsistence.

 

Within the emptiness of my chest

I feel her heart beating in place

As before my eyes a red mist falls

I envy the humanity in her face.

 

Her neck arches to a lasting kiss

A soft whimper with a last breath

Swallows barely contain the flow

As hunger climaxes with her death.

 

Of life now we are both drained

Having released her soul of blight

No longer questioning boundaries

For I answered, for I am the night

 

​

 

Vampire of the City

 

Listening to church bells peal

Thinking upon how glib they sound

So before taking flight into the night

A gobbet he spits to the ground.

 

Burning with unquenchable thirst

The breath of life excites his appetite

This peripheral creature to all that exists

A shadowing silhouette in the moonlight.

 

One among the throng of this city

She of an ancient profession

From a cafe window staring out

Into the abyss of human emotion.

 

So squeezing her lips

On the coffee cup rim

She leaves an imprint

Of a smile in crimson.

 

Walking by high gargoyle crackheads

Below swaggering pigeon Valentinos

Amorous with rooftop courtship

Oblivious to what lurks in shadows.

 

A chill intense swirls about

Biting her bare arms and legs

Instinctual unease tells her to flee.

From the thickening darkness.

 

From breath of  shadows

Sweat clings from fear

Such a chill in exhalation

As to freeze a tear.

 

Ripped from her mind suddenly

The very thought of fear

As thrust out a beastly hand

Clamps shut her trachea.

 

Throat erupts with arterial spray

As teeth cut short a cry

A hand punches through to her heart

Massaged till death’s sigh.

 

Beyond now stare unblinking eyes

A reflected moon cut off to within

Appetence sated the predator preens

Licking at its pale blood spattered skin.

 

With a great scooped woosh of air

The vampire ascends into the evening sky

A victim of the city left behind

Is just another lost soul bled dry

 

Curtains sway to a sleeping unease

While a soul slumbers in dreams

A figure revealed at the window perched

Piqued by her anxiety it seems.

 

Shadowy fingers stroke her pain

Worming into her ears

Burrowing deep to a mind

Where live past nightmares.

 

Feverish hands of a dark desire

About her body explore

To the ceiling stare swollen eyes

Passed the face of her father.

 

Piercing this perverted phantasma

A voice  calls from within her head

She rises through her father's image

Evaporating as she leaves the bed.

 

Drawn toward this siren's call

Through ear oppressing silence

Strangely allayed is her shame and fear

A lifted weight from her conscience.

 

Under a street lamp she pauses

Within an island of light

A blanket of mist around her whirls

Quickening and thickening with might.

 

Her outline fades till all is engulfed

Within a fog like cocoon

Out from the dark the vampire steps

Knowing a rebirth to be soon.

 

From a screaming projection

Comes all from within

As fallen to the ground

Lays her now empty skin.

 

As the mist melts a form emerges

With stuttering steps of one new born

Observed she is with a smile

As her senses study a body transformed

 

As in a ballet she moves in her new form

Graceful in a rapture of release

And with a snap wings unfold

Giving flight to her found peace.

 

The vampire holds out upon his hand

Her heart she knows she has lost

For without, pain will never return

A price worthy of such a loss.

 

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