Leviathan

I thought about posting a more thematic, political poem this week, but it turned out I had already published the one I was thinking of, and, eh, we can all go for something else in the timeline, right? So, here, have a horror poem that may or may not be about the waking of Cthulhu.

Horror is thematically appropriate anyway. I’m not a serious scholar of it—I mostly like Lovecraft’s mythology because at its surface level it’s ridiculous and overly dramatic and makes me laugh—but my understanding is that horror tends to be an outcropping of our own cultural fears anyway. Lovecraft’s horror is largely him being racist; clowns are, I dunno, stranger danger and school shootings; zombies in their various forms can take on any number of symbolic meanings. It can even be prophetic in its own way. I finished out 2020 by reading The Rising, a zombie trilogy by Mira Grant, in which physical touch was potentially dangerous because you could “amplify” and become a zombie; buildings had insane checkpoints to enter to reduce the risk of amplification and outbreaks; and oh yeah, the first book of the trilogy was set during a very contentious presidential campaign in which one candidate was a dangerous lunatic. Note: the books were published in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

All of this to say: I hope this poem is entertainment. I hope it’s not prophetic.

Leviathan

Originally written November 18, 2020

Leviathan was dead. That much we knew.
The dark and monstrous hunter of the deep
Who caused to waves to roil, who stalked and slew
A thousand ships, who never seemed to sleep,
Had washed up on a dismal, lonely shore,
With countless harpoon scars upon its skin—
That monster who had always won the war
Against mankind—that same Leviathan
Was now a torn-up carcass—rotting—dead!
Its riven scales torn up by giant claws—
With scalded flesh and broken neck—its head
Lay limply near—and we knew not the cause
Of its demise. Our guess—at this we quake—
Is, something even bigger is awake.