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“Her faced,
bathed in blood. Her smile,
crazed.
The sounds she makes
as she escapes.

There is nothing else in this world
like realizing
you're going to live
and not being sure
you can.”
― Claire C. Holland, I Am Not Your Final Girl

“The Blood Supper by Stewart Stafford

Nightcrawler leaves their dirt bed,
Seeking an essential blood supper,
Cloaked in regal Stygian armour,
Bar one chink in the left chest area.

All the experience of centuries used,
Lives lived long before their victims,
Stalking stacked in a predator's favour,
Shock overwhelms when blindsided.

The infected victim then becomes one,
With their undead attacker, connected,
Sharing their contagion and obsessions,
In a parasitic void betwixt life and death.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Owl Hollow Road by Stewart Stafford

On a bracing night walk,
On leafy Owl Hollow Road,
A raspy voice whispered to me,
Like a deep-croaking old toad.

I moved rapidly on my path,
And then heard phantom feet,
Looked around, empty space,
Only silence replaced the beat.

At my most pressing pace now,
A shadow pointed past my shoulder,
An SUV slammed into my side,
And I broke my back on a boulder.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Forbidden Place by Stewart Stafford

Bypass the chateau on the hill,
For, as dusk falls, horrors creep,
Griffins and gargoyles fly and flay,
And grotesque statues come alive.

Badinage becomes shrieks and roars,
Shrill warnings for the straying and foolish,
Cats as big as panthers stalk and slay,
As their homicidal master flogs their fur.

Wandering werewolves fetch human bones,
A savage rampage beneath a Hunter's Moon,
As the dawn routine reasserts its dominance,
Denizens of night bathe in darkness's arms.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“A Demon Over Crumpets by Stewart Stafford

While taking tea with my physician father,
He pressed me on what was ailing me,
I imparted my supernatural experiences,
Laughing, he recommended fresh air and rest.

Just then, he stopped chewing his crumpet,
A demon’s image scorched the wall beside us,
I rushed over and scraped the hot soot away,
And saw two bloodshot eyes surveying the room.

I invoked the name of my protector, Jesus Christ,
And bade the dark spirit leave us and, with that,
The blackened image vanished from the wall,
Crackling fireplace flames were the only sound.

My father leapt up, made his excuses, and left,
I last saw his stooping gait and balding pate,
As they fled down the garden path by the hedge,
Darting looks over his shoulder, he was gone.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Unholy by Stewart Stafford

Horrors walk from out a dream,
Apparitions dare reality’s seam,
Gnarly fingers excavate blame,
Sanity stolen in a hellish flame.

No way to think or even breathe,
Or kind worldly goods bequeath,
For Time’s skeletal fingers snap,
Catching souls in a fiendish trap.

Visions boxed, then assail again,
A phantom grin is no one’s friend,
Gasp out awakening perspiration,
Sun falls in creeping desperation.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Apparition by Stewart Stafford

The Indian burial ground,
Lay beyond the tree steeples,
Wind murmured in the branches,
Of lost lands and wounded ancestors.

A new tenant's first night at home,
A Wendigo came in a pandemic fugue,
The head, neck and shoulders visible,
Jittery, contorted shapes on blinds.

Wild dawn packing, screeching tyres,
Home sweet home, still beyond reach,
Out of the driveway at top speed then,
Flight from an entity that won't leave you.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Which is worse? The horror of waking up alone or the horror of waking up next to someone else?”
― Scott C. Holstad

“You’re like a book I hate to read, a story I want to skip through to the end. You take my soul and blow me straight into hell. I’m high on wigged out poems, short shorts that don’t stop. Am I dead? I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S REAL! What about you?”
― Scott C. Holstad

“There’s this space in our lives that we attempt to fill with more space and the nothingness grows larger while our lives get smaller, a fact we can’t seem to accept very well. So, we take walks and we work and we go to movies and basketball games and church and we Exist in our nothing lives and when we die a speech is made and we are forgotten once again, only more permanently this time.”
― Scott C. Holstad, Street Poems

“I see things differently. Rocks look suspicious to me as do certain hubcaps. Paranoia seeps through my pores, it’s just a part of me. Truthfully, I don’t know what to say anymore. My body is a piece of art; I don’t care about external scars, it’s the internal ones I live with and Satan dances towards me.”
― Scott C. Holstad, Shadows Before the Maiming

“normalcy? an answer to a crossword puzzle question my body bears the strain of a suicide wannabe the look in my eye turns people away humanity frightens so easily that the words bubble to the top of the lobotomized”
― Scott C. Holstad, The Napalmed Soul

“Decades of debauchery
Erode both body and soul
‘Til mortal becomes mere shade
Devoid of substance and light.
The living are like strangers
As the dead draw all too near.”
― Richard H. Fay, Cosmic Journeys and Gothic Visions: A Speculative Poetry Collection

“Spring-Heeled Jack Is In The Lane by Stewart Stafford

Go indoors, children, before dark falls,
A fiend comes hideous and inhumane,
Tell your mother not to answer the door,
For Spring-Heeled Jack is in the lane.

Is it spectre, beast or demon?
A trick of light to fool the brain?
Blue flames spew from hellish maw,
Spring-Heeled Jack growls in the lane.

No one can unsee its monstrous face,
Nor its claws of steel that bloodstain,
Its haunting cackle freezes victims,
Spring-Heeled Jack leaps from the lane.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Premium glare of white noise;
tragically prettier than the other toys-
Undress her to be the talk of the room
then throw her on the bed
and let the teddies have the boom”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Doll Shaker

“Misfit toys
don't bring
Christmas joy
Shut up and unwrap
your shiny new identity crisis

She's playing mind games
again
And declares herself the winner

As a child,
I looked for a heart for her
at every yard sale
I could only afford
decay”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Doll Shaker

“My nightmare-man comes SO LOUD;
he comes often, bores me and collects
my wrist cuts-
oh he cuts, he cuts, HE CUTS
Promises me I’m in the black book, he checks,
ha! Yes! Top ten mind-fuckable sluts! Cold cuts;
licks his knives and hands me his double tongue
I say, ‘Oh baby, JUST BREATHE�
as I rip out his dreamy lungs. Can’t gaslight
a FiRestARTeR, dragons up my sleeve; alchemy
Now HE can’t wAke up ‘cause my flames
will never leave

until he’s ready to be a dReAm.


(N i gh tMARE Crush outtakes)”
― Casey Renee Kiser, NightMARE Crush

“They take you to the crossroads / at midnight, you offer / your soul as a door prize.”
― Linda D. Addison