Starship Asterisk*

HEAPOW: The Raving (2022 Oct 31)

The Raving

Once a midnight dark I wondered, though paralyzed with fear I pondered
many an arcane and curious volume of forgotten lore.
When soon my wandering, glancing gaze
turned, and I was sore amazed:
a lightless patch of field not seen before.

Deep into that darkness peering, long there staring, fearing.
When soon there came a tapping
light as rain, a gentle rapping
tapping upon my iron door.
An indistinct picture slowly gathered, downlinked, further examined:

Darkness there and nothing more.

In that awful darkness, deep, unbroken,
Still the stillness gave no token,
and I did turn to go upstairs to bed.
But slowly did that drear blackness begin to shimmer,
gaping, did begin to glimmer
and shook me to the core with solemn dread.

In that poor field of darkness yawning
was an ancient chasm dawning
hidden hideous beasts now I singularly saw.
Light enough, new signs of horror
Inclined I was by my own terror
To view this monstrous scene of cosmic gore

For in that dark, warped tentacles dangled
and even the incautious stars they mangled
who wandered close to that awful, unseen shore;
screaming as they fell below me
Hellish heat did only show me
Destruction on a scale not seen before

And deep below that accursed horizon
End of space and time arising
doomed worlds swallowed whole, to be sounded
Nevermore