Alone I walked solemn

along the gravel paths

in the bleak shadows of the graves

when I saw an entourage dressed in black

with a coffin of finest oak

Who is buried in this late hour

so secretly laid to rest

in the most distant corner

in the field of death?

When I reached the open grave

the night laid still and desolate

curious I sneaked to the edge

and gazed surprised down

in the open empty coffin

when I felt a hard push

and fell headlong

in the soft velvet death

In the suffocating dark

I could hear

ashes to ashes

and earth to earth

that fell on my lid

and my brother and my fiancé

laughing as ravens from hell

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark is a poet and horror novelist from London, England. His works include over fifty poems and stories published in various e-zines, anthologies, and magazines since his return as a storyteller in 2010. He is the founder of Horrified Press (horrifiedpress.wordpress.com), and hopes to help publicise some of the great new stars working in modern horror today.

Return Fair

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

Carried along on an excrement’s flume, the corpse of dear William left its tomb,
floating away by a tributary stance, to be righted once more and regain a lost stance.

Hitting the crest of a sewer built wave, without ticking pulse or a heartbeat to save,
last rights of passage dissolved in the hume, of a thick oozing liquid, his bones to consume.

Slipped from the graveyard, then stolen away, the earth was found willing to give William his day.
A chemical sludge from pipe fractured nearby, that had hole in its tunnel for a gentleman’s eye,

found worms passage teeming from a miscreant deed, as a cellular wriggled collective agreed,
the unjust of internments need turn on its head, so a constable’s murder could be forgotten instead.

Moulded in structure, yet weak from decay, three hundred years of mystery began to melt away,
until a fusion’s symphony, unnatural in its end, rose up the banished legacy of an England to defend.

Surveying self most vigorously, a thief taker replaced, arms and legs peculiar, from grotesque feet  embraced,

William rose to greet the dawn, for the bell tower ring of his penitence cried. “I am fairly returned,” he remembered, “for no longer have I died.”