Our editor-in-chief Dave Martel, who has haunted the podcast circuit for roughly a decade is quickly becoming known for his energetic interviews and eccentric social media presence. Readers of our publication will recognize him for his grimdark antihero “Lucious Lex” and imaginative introduction pieces. While most editors enjoy a behind-the-scenes role, Mr. Martel is quite the opposite. He spews a geyser of creative arcane energy into the ether.
One of his outlets of creative effort is what he calls “Weird Poetry”. These pieces are reminiscent of the type of lyrical oddities you would expect from a student of Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Quite different from what you would see among most modern poets, Martel’s prose tells tales of haunted places, eldritch beings and visceral fantasy violence.
You can certainly find inspiration from the aforementioned legends in his prose however his alliterative tongue twisters and vivid imagery make for a flavor that is uniquely Martellian. The following works are a sneak peak of an upcoming collection that he says will be available late 2022.
From Space it Came Falling
By Dave Martel
Here trees grow sideward
A forest unnatural
Lifeforce perverted
Spirits be wrathful
Warping wood wilds
Disorder of time
See nature defiled
No reason or rhyme
Foul feral forms
Creatures grow twisted
White fangs and black horns
Know not what bewitched them
Brackish bogs birthing
Baleful black beasts
Slithered slime surfing
Foul floating foam yeast
From space it came falling
Strange hues from it glowing
To all things it's calling
Strange forces come flowing
Critters now hateful
Hungered for flesh
They feast on each other
And from their own nests
Rapidly spreading
Land falling ill
Malforming the world
To its alien will
Purple skies moan
Air reeks of strange sour
It replicated its home
And Earth's been devoured
Into the Dreamsea
by Dave Martel
I've dreamt black thirst of vengeance
Carried by hateful wings
To ebon moons of far-flung worlds
Where goatish devils sing
I've plunged jagged chasm voids
That vomit molten earth
Geysers belching bile bursts
Steaming vile birth
I've thrusted sharpened blades
Into a thousand breasts
Relish every time I see
The panicked eyes of death
I care not for the luxuries
Of song and silk and feast
Gift me stampeding choired hate
Of a hundred hungered beasts
Take me to the shaman's grove
With hung corpses on display
Frenzied dances, bloody rites
Forgotten magic ways
Then pass me ghastly goblets
Forged from wizards' bones
Let the elixir melt my mind
As I sit on broken thrones
Teach me long lost legends
Scryed on long lost tombs
In the blood of slaughtered kings
Who met untimely dooms
Then I return to mundane world
With maddened magic tales
And write them down for others
For the dreamsea they may sail
Phantom of Black Lake
By Dave Martel
The phantom takes flight
As darkness sets in
Wailing women in white
Moan ghoulish black hymns
Vaguely human in form
It shifts in its shape
Cool waters turn warm
On ancient black lake
Cultists entranced
On lakeshores of grey shale
Clasping cold hands
Cry chorused queer wails
Through eons and ages
Phantasm laid wait
Calling witches and mages
To open its gate
Twitching, distending
Bones cracking, deformed
Spasms, limbs bending
Blood mists from their pores
Crimson clouds fill the sky
Howls of unspeakable pain
Twisted bodies sucked dry
Their corpses all drained
The phantom has drank
Of those whom it leered
Back to black lake it sank
For a thousand more years
The Yawning Chasm
By Dave Martel
The chasm it yawns
A void of dark depths
Since the primordial dawns
Its secrets have kept
It groans and it grinds
An endless dull roar
It moans and it whines
From unknowable core
Men venture beneath
But never return
Their wives left to weep
They never do learn
Never escape
This hideous black maw
Forever agape
Earth's ancient black jaws
Tales have been told
Of what lies thereunder
Hoards of lost gold
And devils that slumber
A realm so chthonic
Men could not fathom
Under spires of onyx
Within yawning chasm