The Behemoth

This poem was inspired by Lovecraftian and cosmic horror.

Salt in the air,

The moisture from the zephyrs.

Water crashing against the hull,

With some entering the barque.

Day had receded,

And night have come.

Grey with a cold drop in the sky.

And bizarrely,

The moon was not hanging from the sky.

Over yonder, 

The bodies of dark clouds crept toward us.

The waves grew ever more in turmoil. 

Then, near the horizon,

A flash of lightning.

Just a blink, 

And…

A shape. A silhouette.

Large. Enormous.

Uncanny. Unearthly.

Other-worldly.

As the storm grew closer,

So does it feel 

As if it was also growing closer.

The ship rocking to and fro, 

Back and forth on the water,

Creaking with the noise of wood.

The howling of the gale,

The torrent of the water.

Another flash,

And I only saw a vague tentacle, 

Perhaps, protruding out of the shape.

An eerily slow creeping from once a silence 

Into an unpredictable madness.

The clouds were overhead,

Blackened like charcoal,

Covering the vault of the skies.

Rain poured in a gush from above.

A flash of lightning.

A sudden intake of vision.

So large blocking the horizon.

Then another flash.

Ginormous. Behemoth. Goliath.

A monster. 

Once again, a flash, lasting longer.

The sharp white broke my eyes 

And gave light to a creature.

A colossus, 

Roaming the waves.

A leviathan,

Stalking for prey.

A beast,

Living eons old until it awoke 

From the deepest bowels of the earth.

It was there, soaring beyond the clouds,

A form so inhuman,

A form so phantomic �"

The form of a wight.

All vision covered by its body.

Something incomprehensible to the mind �"

To the human mind.

The brain feels like it is corroding,

Disintegrating from the real world,

Reality being shattered by its form �"

A being so multitudinous in mass,

A great unknown.

No human limb.

No human-like structure.

But a head with eyes so numerous in the billowing clouds,

Looking toward a puny man,

Eyes of the darkest sharpest stare on the feeble vision.

Water rushing as it moves closer,

Crashing against the marge of the ship.

The eyes dead center,

Down upon the standing man.

Falling down on the knees,

A chaotic burst of insanity rupture the mind.

Rupturing the sky like a parting of blue skies, 

Of white puffs of clouds in not a powerful glory,

Yet a disarray of fractures breaking through space.

There it stands, 

Wide and tall,

A kraken to a sea of rushing water,

A giant to a field of lush grass,

And a dragon to a sky of blue sapphire.

The minds were raptured so untimely �"

Untimely with the raging eyes of the behemoth.

A horrifying sight that the very eyes cry in blood,

Losing its color.

Such a terrifying view �"

A view rifting the mind from reality,

Severing the consciousness 

From sense and nonsense

With just one look.

The head in a tortured state

In an ever so agonizing pain �"

In such a pain 

That the locks of the vessel may burst �"

Burst an array of fresh red and mangled flesh.

Such a figure so unearthly 

Its sight wildering the very sentience,

Breaking the laws of nature itself,

A revolt to nature,

Altering a being to conform to its own ways.

And now, its form brings an end to life.

The darkness enveloping the consciousness,

Darkness devouring the doomed expanse of the world �"

The expanse of existence �"

An end in esse.

And there lying on the deck,

A splash of red in a disarray of flesh.

The rain pours,

Mingling in the red;

And what a sight to see for that behemoth.

Reviews

[Carlos Lorenzo Estrada]

A nice dread filled piece of writing that would bring a smile to Lovecraft himself. Excellent work.