Come, me merry Gents and Misses,
and hear me morbid tale o'twist'us,
Ye fear the sound revenge insist'us,
as a weary
yeep o' mist encrypt'us.
A mile away from yonder he,
standing upon a balcony,
stares off into infinity,
the man that ye fear desperately.
He cackles and coughs and growls, ye see,
and swallows yer soul ere easily,
and while ye scream he watches ye,
from up on his high balcony.
But lads! He wasn't born this way!
He found himself in slight decay,
upon the matter of love, he pay,
and was pulled into shadows of demon gray.
And from this gray, he only sees,
from up on his high balconies,
the pang of love and destinies,
that define yer mere fragility.
Alas, his love was not the best,
for she fell for such a jest,
as to follow all the rest,
and sin among the demon's nest.
A demon, yes, was just the case,
morbid, a man with such a face:
inhuman, devilish, a living disgrace;
burned bloody by fire; his skin erased.
Serpentine scars would trace his eyes
to such a point of no disguise,
the girl was in for her demise,
and men from yonder heard her cries.
And from the point on balcony,
love ran to her with shaky knee,
and seeing her demonic glee,
ran through his heart with agony.
For no man bears to see his love
gripped tightly by the devil's glove
and lack the grief upon breast of
the man who saw his dying love.
The devil then leered a decree
to prolong this man's misery,
to rip off his heart of agony,
and hang him from his balcony.
And so he sits, and cackles, and coughs,
and watches the horizon and never stops,
and tortures us with babbling thoughts
and talks of revenge in sinful draughts.
For this man had tried his best,
to get around her sinning jest,
and save her from the devilish crest
that she laid careless on her breast.
So this is why I'm telling ye,
Ye steer clear from paths of he,
and instead, think about his plea,
to end his demonic misery.
That was great! I love the eerie feeling it gave with the descriptions of this man and with him only being a mile away. I also like how vividly you explained how he became that way. How you wrote it all seemed as if I was really there, hearing this tale from a resident I met while traveling. In that area, I'd keep it up. I'm just curious on how the narrator knows all of this. I'm guessing it's from rumors, but maybe he saw the man himself? From how you wrote it, I'm definitely guessing it's from rumors, but I just love background information on narrators. That's just me, though, and I think it works fine without any of it. Overall, it was great!
Hello. The rhyme scheme seemed a bit forced at times. The way it was structured wasn't very symmetrical. Sometimes you had the abab, aaaa, abbb, etc. You write well with old language. The poem did indeed make sense until I tried to make sense of it and analyze it. I wrote down what I think each stanza might mean. But like I said on chat, I don't understand poetry that well. Hope this helps...
-Crescent
Spoiler
This was pretty cool! I definitely felt like there was more of a vintage feel during the beginning rather than the end, however, and there were a few points where the rhyme scheme was forced and sounded a little strange just because the rhythm was lost here and there. All the same, I thought this was definitely unique and a fun read.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver