As promised, this blog will focus on a variety of entertainment, so long as it’s plenty horrific! Today, I bring you poetry.

Alistair Cross grew up on horror novels and scary movies. By the age of 8, he began writing his own stories. Fast forward to 2012 – that’s when his first novel was published by Damnation Books, and he’s been busy cranking out dark tales and poetry for his readers ever since.

Alistair hosts a live radio show, Thorne & Cross: Haunted Nights LIVE, and you can find his website at: AlistairCross.com. The two poems we’ve chosen to share with you are dark and clever and evocatively disturbing. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

The Beautiful Girl

I woke up with a girl

Who was dead as could be

This a most macabre scenario

That made no sense to me

~

I couldn’t recollect her

From the night before

But there she was with cold blue flesh

In a dress made of velour

~

Her sightless eyes were watching me

Her mouth agape in fear

And down her cheek a tell-tale streak

Of a single dried up tear

~

And for weeks now I have wondered

How she came to be

This beautiful, decaying girl

Who keeps me company

***

A Book of Morbid Methods

I met her in the pages

Of an old dust-covered book

A book of misadventure

And the sad wife of a crook

~

She married into money

That was her belief

But she recently discovered

She’d been married to a thief

~

She was written to be pretty

She had diamond rings and furs

And she said it was all mine

If I’d trade my world for hers

~

She was angry at her writer

For her husband’s cons and lies

For her life of sins and secrets

And her pseudo-human guise

~

But I told her it was dull

Here on the other side

That over here, life’s dismal

And ruled by greed and pride

~

I declined her proposition

But she said, “Just look at me…

I have everything I want

I am glamorous and free…”

~

For a moment, I considered

What did I have to lose?

The world might have more meaning

If viewed from in her shoes

~

She watched me as I pondered

But she sensed my hesitation

Then a tear fell from her eye

And she said in desperation…

~

“My husband is suspicious

That I know what’s going on

He’s a man of morbid methods

I’ll be sorry before long.”

~

And this I did consider

What was I to do?

Maybe if I tried

I could rewrite a page or two

~

And so I traded places

With my newfound fiction friend

But what I didn’t realize

Was the book was at its end

~

For, just moments after stepping

Into the pages of this book

By way of strangulation

I was murdered by the crook

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