DARK DESIRES

by JUSTIN GEOFFREY

From The People of the Monolith

Edited and with an Introduction by Christian Leopold Shea, D.D.

The Miskatonic University Press, Cthulhu Mythos Poetry Series,

Volume III, Arkham, Massachusetts.

Whenever I think of you my heart skips a beat.

The way the sunlight reflects off of your golden hair

Makes you look like a Pagan idol and inspires worship.

Oh, how I would love to worship you and you alone,

Transforming you into a sacrament, body and soul.

Would that you would say to me:

This is my flesh; take; eat.

This is my blood; take; drink.

O beauteous one, how I so desire to love you,

Love you as no one else has ever done or ever shall.

O bronze-skinned, golden-haired beauty,

Why were we not born in some savage land,

So that I might show you the true depths of my love?

Desire for you wells up in me like a fountain,

A fountain of unquenchable, eternally burning fire.

I long to hold you closer than anyone ever has,

I long to make myself one with you so that we,

We alone of the human race, may from two become one.

What an unjust world this is, that you and I

Should dwell in a "civilized" land and be denied true union.

O, thou paragon of Beauty, I truely deore Oneness,

Oneness with you alone of all the miserable human race,

Yet "the powers that be" forbid my dark desires.

But, O my beloved, were we in some savage land,

I would make us two souls knit into one body:

I would rend your flesh with my teeth, swallowing whole

Your beautiful flesh and drinking hot and fresh

The blood pumped from your loving heart.

O, beloved, in some savage land we might be one,

We might be whole and joined as only savages are,

Not like puerile "marrieds" in this benighted land

Of cities and trains and trolleys and automobiles,

So foreign to our true human nature: the desire to be One.

Every Sunday I kneel in church and pray,

And I take the Blessed Sacrament,

But it is your flesh I imagine eating,

It is your blood I imagine drinking,

And not that of the Church's god.

O, my beloved, deny my pleas no longer:

Bare for me your throat, your arms,

Your breasts, your legs and secret parts

That I may devour you whole and alive,

Hearing your screams as paens of true joy.

O, my beloved, when the heavens ring

With your cries of pain, they shall be echoed

By my angelic hymns of utter joy,

Joy in the Oneness of our being,

Joy in our true and inseparable union.

Beloved one, why do you shrink from my touch?

Why do you recoil at my deepest confession of love?

Why do you scream so, O my beloved?

My beloved, why have you taken up the telephone?

O, my dearly beloved, you should be alive when we are joined!

*****

The sadness of your funeral nearly undid me,

Nearly caused me to lose my sanity, beloved,

But that is a matter of no importance now,

For now time is of the essence and I must finish,

Finish before the sexton returns to find your empty grave.

--30--