Horsell Common - A Poem

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

Hello,

More poetry again. I’ve been madly busy and as such am desperately behind on movie-watching (which is really gnawing at me). To tide you over, I’m putting out poems in between reviews.

Oh, and I’m working on Hokum, so keep your eyes out for that.

And stay creepy!!!

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Written in 2020, I believe. Best read aloud.

I hope you enjoy.

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We stood, a group, a dozen strong,

Or maybe more, I wasn’t sure,

Around the massive crater, wide,

The dusty pit, in which it lay;

A cylinder of reddened steel,

That burned the dirt to blackened char,

And filled the musty air with smoke,

So there it sat, all caked in mud,

And there we watched its lid unscrew,

The noise was horrible to hear,

And yet nobody went away,

We all stood there for hours, sure that someone must be stuck inside,

But nothing happened much until,

A shining screw sailed to the floor,

And thus the lid came off,

And, like a bottle-cork, it flew away,

Releasing a thick cloud of smoke,

Obscuring that which lay within,

But not for long enough, I fear,

For soon the smoke had disappeared,

And then we saw what lay within;

A creature, twice or thrice our size,

It had two luminescent eyes,

Two discs of solemn, solid green,

That looked up suddenly and blinked,

With pupils thinner than a snake’s,

Though the same malice lay within,

And then I saw its frightful mouth,

A lipless slobbering machine,

A crunching squelching thing it was,

I felt I had to look away,

Yet still a bile in my throat,

Rose quickly, thickly to my tongue,

And as I looked again I saw,

The creature’s bulky twisted limbs,

Make clumsy sickened movements,

Like a foal that had been newly born,

Or something hellish from the pit,

And then like lightning Satan came,

A plume of fire split the air,

I saw the creature press and pull,

At something inside its machine,

And like an evil warlock then,

It cast a magic, dark and foul,

And fire leapt from tree to tree,

And struck a dozen people down,

I ran like Death itself was nigh,

Of course, it was, just at my heels,

And so I ran, and all around,

There was an air of a smoky red,

In which my very lungs did burn,

Like pretty little ember-ash,

Until at last I got away,

And sat upon a hillside, green,

With eyes now streaming, running black,

As in my mind, a fire blazed.

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As ever, thanks for reading,

Until next time,

H.E.

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