For a few minutes at a time you can rest here

behind gray walls and a paper thin door

before called back out to a fluorescent-lit graveyard

the realm of weak monarchs

who walk empty rows of fallow fields

in search of subjugation

or at least a pool of water calm enough to use as a mirror

that they can stop and stare into

to convince themselves they still have on their crowns

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Every now and then I pick up my copy of Lovecraft’s complete works and read something from it. Today it was The Shunned House. It can be hard to separate the man from the writing. He was horribly racist and quite literally xenophobic. He also knew how to write horror like no one else could.

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