Dream of the Ghoul

Grady McMurtry

14 September 1940

Ah, dear one, your fair face alight

With such joy is a blessed sight

As we embrace among the crypts

Through which the sluggish water drips;

Slowly it finds saturation

From bodies merged with hydration.

Lie reposed upon this lid, dear,

It is so long since you were near.

My stiff fingers would undress you,

My worm-eaten arms caress you

And in this dark my ghastly lips

Mash down upon the flesh-pink tips

Of your firm, yet soft yielding breast

That surges like an ocean crest.

Our love is stronger than the grave

For to my corpse a life it gave

To drag it back from out the slime

And now I live beyond my time;

Live? Undead is the better word;

My blood is whey, my brain a curd

And still the melting flesh flows down

From out the mattered hairline crown

As off my softened bones now slips

The feral flesh. The grave worm sips

And wriggles in this charnel slush

Of a corruption that is mush.

My rot-filled hair will yet grow out,

Each mud scaled string a grisly sprout

And from my dripping nostrils run

A filth that drives mad anyone.

But you, my love, have no such doom;

You were mad e'er you burst my tomb!

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