POETRY BY A.J. DALTON

A. J. Dalton is a UK-based writer. He’s published The Empire of the Saviours trilogy with Gollancz Orion, The Darks Woods Rising and Digital Desires poetry collections, and other bits and bobs. He lives with his monstrously oppressive cat named Cleopatra.

You can find him HERE

THE WEIRD WAY TO DUNWICH

The mind sees
what it believes,
knows and wants
—it cannot perceive otherwise
else it becomes unseated
and madness reigns.

Yet signs and omens will present themselves
suggesting impossible things
to be rejected,
feared and questioned
until obsession and a sort of possession
overtake us.

And so the unwary find their way
to the hamlet of Dunwich
when daydreaming
and taking the left fork
at the Aylesbury pike,
to be led into a lonely and curious country.

Here hills are unnaturally humped
with ancient stone circles atop
and a wide altar stone
sings and moans in the wind
echoing the rumbling mumbling
or screams cracking below ground.

The decrepit village crouches,
its people scurry furtively
fear their own degeneracy
for here the wayward Whatleys
listened too closely to wildly imagined words
conjured by whimsy or the shuddering influence of Yog-Sothoth.

MAN GROVE

In the dark magician’s garden
bodies slowly writhe, pinned by wooden stakes:
growing from their chests
bloody blooms of flowering mandrakes.

In the dark magician’s garden
there’s moaning and grrroooaning
whimpering and pleas
for mercy and death.

In the dark magician’s garden
roots ease into arteries
releasing a paralyzing toxin
to prevent too much tormented struggle.

In the dark magician’s garden
the miasma of human manure and mulch
is thick and busy with flies
around nose and mouth and eyes.

Perhaps you’ll visit my garden one day
and enjoy the hungry flora
I’ll cannibalize a salad for us
and we’ll catch up on old times.

S. LATITUDE 47.9, W. LONGITUDE 23.43

The Old Ones will not have
their existence known by any
save their worshippers
to spread their influence
without challenge
until all’s too late
to thwart their return.
Yet dreamers have stumbled
upon deep R’lyeh
the sea-submerged green-stoned city where
their priest vigilantly
waits in that death-sleep
of ancient epochs stretching
back to the stars.
The prophet Lovecraft warned
us but died suspiciously alone
unrecognized, silenced
be that a lesson to you
and me and us:
I should not dare write
this, nor you read it.
Yet now you have
the cursed co-ordinates
where you will find
I don’t know
damnation, madness
or enslavement, for there are so many things
worse than death.