THOU 5th installment of gory loudness,
Thou oft repeated script of messy deaths in time and time again,
Cinema horror fan, who canst thus express
Such bread and butter tales more bloodily than our rhyme:
What bowel-fringed tissue fragments haunt about thy screen
Round loose heads or flopping appendages, or of both,
In air flying or across floors smearing, outside or in?
What victims are these? What maidens quartered thus?
Which death pursues? What struggle to escape when sequels beckon?
What screams and entrails? What wild ecstatic gore?
Seen terminus’s are sweet, but those bleeding reddest
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft impalings, gut on;
Not to the sensual eye, but, more endear’d,
Slice to the entrails, tear the eyes, these messy ditties:
Fair youth, beneath the car, thou canst not breath
Thy song of fear, nor ever can these scenes be fair;
Bold victim, never, never canst thou live,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
You cannot fade, though thou hast not thy stomach nor other bodily parts,
For ever wilt thou die, for Death be not fair!
Ah, happy, happy fans! that cannot shed
Your quest for gore, nor ever bid the grue adieu;
And, happy dramatist, unwearièd,
For ever piping scripts for ever over and over again;
More happy death! more happy, happy death!
For ever breathing warm, and wet, sopped to overflowing,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human misery far above,
That leaves a heart bursting forth, and cloyed over rest,
On burning forehead, a dislodged tongue, or cleaved breast.
Who are these critics coming to the sacrifice?
To what film altar, O mysterious critic,
Lead’st thou that review lowing at the tale,
And all its slimey flanks with gorelands drest?
What nestled town by river or sea-shore,
Or home-built citadel in city or temple,
Is emptied of its victims, this pious morn?
And, nestled town, thy streets for evermore
Will no longer silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou’s art’s so desolate, can e’er return,
Till sequel plays havoc once again.
O terror shape! fear attitude! with dread
Of creature men and bosomy maidens overwrought,
With frightful branches thick with the trodden bowels;
Thou, noisome form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold tableau!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, to kindle other woe, more
Than ours, a fiend to all, to whom thou say’st,
‘Horror is truth, truth horror,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,
Till the next final destination.
by John M. “Keets” Cozzoli