Help Me

He who sups with Mephistopheles should
Eat with caution from elongated spoon.
Like snakes in grass wending a scheming falsehood,
Pythonic vices commence their commune.

Mutterings stir in malignant accost,
Encroaching, aloof, invisible frost...

How ’t all began I can scarcely re-cite,
Encumbered therein by chaste rationale,
Logic found guilty of gross oversight,
Pallbearer henceforth ‘f untainted morale.

Migrant sounds began to pepper the air,
Ensued at intervals everywhere.

Hothouse hereafter of utterances,
Echoes so vague yet so convoluted,
Like traces of surrounding seances,
Puncture with bitter rebuke the muted.

Myriad ponders can’t hope to deduce
Exactly why I’ve been chosen to reduce.

How cannot others perceive what I hear?
Empty-headers all blamed sonic ingress!
Luddite ears wilfully deaf to the sear,
Parasite slinker of awesome finesse.

Moonstruck convulsions assail the room,
Erudition renounced, seduced to swoon.

Heaven knows how I’ve wound up in this Hell,
Eloping vices, wanton and perverse,
Lap at my shore oh tiding infidel!
Perfidious curse, I speak now your verse.

Mephitic fever bedevils my head,
Equal to nothing, foul festering dread.

Hortoccultic growth of devilish seeds
Entwine mangled thorns through my fracturing mind,
Listen closely, for something here breathes,
Pentecaustic imposter- show your kind!

Merciless fiend- shan’t let you showcase
Epitomies of your will to debase.

Hellish cacophony furtively howls,
Elicits the rain but in sound alone,
Like a hiss-crinkle-tap, an aural scowl,
Pitters and patters whose sources disown.

Mercurial vacillations between
Empty silence and jibes steeply obscene.

How hexed I was when first it sounded,
Eerie, fricative; a vexing sonance,
Like an insect’s crawl only confounded,
Plosive in newfound devil alliance.

Mirthful, the birdsong chimed alacrity,
Each blessed in abating illiteracy.

Horrorscopic recall, that youthful fright,
Educing your tableau, stalking overhead,
Lonesome obtruder closely out of sight,
Prowling there somewhere right above my bed.

Mortiferous foe, I know thus your sneer
Endure no more your iniquitous drear.

Homesick villain called upon me once more
Evading my sight, exciting my fears,
Lamenting lost time in spiteful encore,
Poised in pursuit all these interim years...

Malingering creep be you back in revolt?
Echoing proud aforementioned assault.

Hateful barrator why follow me still?
Ever shan’t I gravitate to your call?
Lost though I am to your suffering will,
Perils anew spell my coming downfall!

Mal-melody speech, fallaciously wrought,
Enslaved I drift like a lost astronaut.

How you lurk unseen I cry reprimand,
Espied suspects soon beguile into lies,
Listening shades by the lamp and coat stand,
Pillage of reason my mind and my eyes.

Meanwhile clouds laden now stir overhead,
Engulf in stark shadows stray faith misled.

Heckles resume met with raucous applause,
Ever did there sound such unpleasantries?
Lupine, foreboding and ambushing scores
Prey yet again ‘pon my discarded pleas.

Moments of silence- ‘perhaps it’s gone’
Even imaginary all along?

Halt! be silent- for it whispers once more,
Elusive fiend! Why torment me this way?!
Lost sputters reverberate, cross the floor,
Pacemaking creed of our sonic ballet.

Minister courage and strength to ignore,
Earworm most irate I can’t but deplore!

Hostile taunting and flaunting of power,
Each snark utterance like shoes on loose ground,
Languid, insipid, yet piercingly dour,
Phantom torpedo, I’ve only your sound.

Meeting my distress, stout discontent, you
Exalt I trust in my imprisonment.

Heinous in sound I envisage its sight,
Erratic imaginings hybridised,
Longing I pray its bark exceeds its bite,
Purgatory inertia crystallised.

Muster I must ‘fore the coming sinkhole,
Expends, debases and splurges my soul.

Half hour hath span since my turmoil began,
Every second fresh calls breech the threshold,
Like that ticking croc with the taste for Hook,
Prophetic forecast, my fate is foretold.

Martyr me now if it means I’m still sane,
Execute, shoot, or feed me to the flame!

Hark for the feral derangel thus sings!
Expels coarse alchemic malevolence;
Libertine chords haughtily harrowing,
Precociously furtive, the insolence!

Marshal the room, furious to untuck,
Even a trace of this absolute-

Hurl all aside as I scour the place,
Everything smashes and breaks as I clear,
Loath to admit, the flat’s a disgrace,
Persevere I must, for I know you’re near!

Murmurs abound with such arrogant flare,
Ebbing and surging, I know now your lair...

How to describe my plummet to the ground,
Except that I also leapt to the sky!
Lurking there beneath that final surmount,
Purveyor of ills, virulently wry.

Meteoric shock like a lightning strike
Emptied the world’s most unholy Klondike...

HALLUCINATORY HORROR REVEALED!!
EXPOSED BE THE ARCHITECT OF SUCH FEAR!
LOOK UPON HE FOR WHOM HELL IS UNSEALED!
PROUD FOUNDING ANIMUS, MASTER ENGINEER!

MARINATING IN HATE- THE SUCCUBUS!
ENVENOMER OH SO ILLUSTRIOUS...

Here paralysing inertia befell,
Eyes locked agape t’wards my antagonist,
Looming panic and frightfulness excel,
Panoptical audial masochist!

Mesmeric terror, when will you subside,
Ever will I hope to reclaim my pride?

Hard to concede its troglodyte essence,
Exceeding all reason- I’m overcome!
Language alone can never recompense
Poor substitute, merely, simulacrum.

Marauding ignoble interloper,
Embalms me in haze, a walking sopor.

How oddly forlorn be this earthly guise,
Exotic, uncouth, quite gawky and crass,
Like a man-o-war hurled down from the skies,
Pallid, tentacle-less, gurgling mass.

Must only measure a few feet squared, but
Even the surface it sat on was scared.

Has this thing a head?, difficult to see,
Eyes nor ears, but red hooked antennae
Loop weightless atop its limbless body,
Patterned with lines like the wings of a fly.

Most hesitant re-inspection, behold,
Each line is a crinkle, a crease or fold.

Hallmarks of action; they trace its movement,
Each shape-shifting twist and sardonic hiss,
Lighter than paper my frightful opponent,
Prized aggressor locked in faceless grimace.

My angst from bewilder I can’t avulse,
Especially now that I’ve noticed its pulse...

Hollow-bodied, I can see inside! No
Entrails, vitals or bone, just skin,
Like all had been eaten or torn aside by
Pestilent creatures living deep within.

Macabre curiosities hold me ’til
Egregious new evidence freezes me still.

How Dante recalls such gaping terrain;
Enter forth and to the docent you’ll go!
Lamentation, sorrow, lyrical pain,
Pass straight through for Dis, lost city of woe.

More than just warnings grace the abyss,
Each cue rooted deep in gnarly promise.

Hollow indeed but the void is its mouth!
Entire thing could swallow my head!
Lusting, incensed in deplorable drouth,
Parched of ‘something’ and bemoaning with dread.

Manically arched as though facing the sky,
Earnestly fixed in stark battle-cry.

Herald of awful and unhallowed things?
Except that it stands as though on its knees,
Lost to some harsher imaginings? It’s
Purpose still nonetheless not to appease.

Molesting, deriding, infernal, fervour,
Enlist me no more insatiable lure!

Harnessed arrest to said darker behests?
Embroiled, exhaling, seemingly supine
Letter-like shapes emerge on it’s ‘chest’!
Prosaics ajoining its shrieking repine.

Marionette or the mastermind? Or
Entangled, helixed and intertwined?

Haltingly so I witness the words grow,
Embedded within its plastic white skin,
Letters, embossing, rise up from below,
Prostituting atrocities therein!

Misguided however my thoughts may be,
Envelop me not strange new empathy!

Handicapped threat still advises my bind, for
Enervation masks in dangerous guise,
Like a captive reptile needs only to find
Presence of mind to tear you down to size.

Malice manifest I dare not attest
Each truth ‘f this harbinger of the unblessed!

Hades would never have welcomed it back,
Exposing itself as so destitute!
Like It not myself was under attack,
Pale creature languished, yearning restitute.

Most heartbreakingly quaint the shapes now speak,
Each portent no more, but pleading and weak:

H
E
L
P

Me it choked like Medusa despair,
Eyes eaten through by the strands of her hair.

H
E
L
P

Me it seethed as it struggled to breathe,
Ectoplasmic hisses heaved in bequeath.

H
E
L
P

Me it pleaded as all it conceded,
Each exerting crease and fold unheeded.

H
E
L
P

Me it prayed in contorted malaise,
Encursed in newfangled torturous craze.

H
E
L
P

Me it sighed as it writhed mortified,
Everything vied with the threat it belied.

And Silence.

Silence.

[inaudible] Silence.