Snuffed tapers sighed
   As Death left impressing
   His crest of cold tears on the Countess
  
   Benighted like ill-fated Usher
   The House of Bathory shrouded
   'Neath griefs dark facade
  
   If only I could have wept
   In mourning by Her side
   I would have clasped Her so tight
   Like storm-beached Aphrodite
   Drowned on Kytherean tides
  
   And Kissed Her
   For from Her alone
   My lips would have known
   Enigmas of shadowy vistas
  
   Where pleasures took flesh
   And pain, remorseless
   Came freezing the breath
   Of raucous life hushed unto whispers
  
   Benighted.
  
   Inhaling the pale waning moonlight that crept
   Through the crypt of Her Lord who so lucidly slept
  
   Benighted.
  
   Exhaling the wail of black widowhood's toll
   Waxing eternal night entered Her soul
  
  
   II.A Murder of Ravens in Fugue
  
   Now haranguing grey skies
   With revenge upon life
   Gnathic and Sapphic
   Needs begged gendercide
  
   Delusions of Grandier denounced the revolt
   Of descrying cursed glass, disenchanted in vaults
   Encircled by glyphs midst Her sin-sistered cult
  
   With hangman's abandon She plied spiritworlds
   To Archangels in bondage
   From light to night hurled
   Cast down to the earth where torment would unfurl.......
  
   But soon,
   Her tarot proved
   Hybrid rumours spread like tumours
   Would accrue
   And blight Her stars
   To better bitter truths
   Of cold bloodbaths
  
   As bodies rose
   In rigid droves
   To haunt Her from their
   Shallow burials imposed
   When wolves exhumed
   Their carthen wombs
   Where heavy frosts had laboured long
   To bare their wounds
  
   To the depths of Her soul they pursued
   Wielding their poison they flew
   Like a murder of ravens in fugue
  
   And knowing their raptures
   Would shatter Her dreams
   She clawed blackened books for damnation's reprieve
   Baneful cawed canons on amassed enemies
  
   So Hallow's Eve
   As She received
   Like Bellona to the ball
   Those enemies
   Fell-sisters heaved
   Her torturies
   Cross stained flagstones
   To Her carriage reined to flee
  
   But She knew She must brave the night through
   Though fear crept a deathshead o'er the moon
   Like a murder of ravens in Fugue
  
   For each masked, jewelled gaze held dread purpose
   Horror froze painted eyes to cold stares
   And even Her dance
   In the vast mirrors cast
   Looked the ill of Her future
   If fate feasted there....
  
  
   III.Eyes That Witnessed Madness
  
   In an age crucified by the nails of faith
   When rank scarecrows of christ blighted lands
   An aloof Countess born an obsidian wraith
   Dared the abyss knowing well She was damned
   Her life whispered grief like a funeral march
   Twisted and yearning, obsessed an entranced
   With those succumbing to cruelty
   Crushed 'neath the gait of Her dance
   A whirlwind of fire that swept through the briers
   Of sweet rose Her thickets of black thorn had grasped....
  
   She demanded the Heavens and forever to glean
   The elixir of Youth from the pure
   Whilst Her lesbian fantasies
   Reamed to extremes
   O'er decades unleashed
   Came for blood's silken cure
  
   But Her reign ended swiftly
   For Dark Gods dreamt too deep
   To heed Her pleas
  
   When Her gaolers were assailed
   With condemnations from a priest
   Who'd stammered rites
   In the dead of night
   For maidens staining winding sheets
  
   And She postured proud
   When Her crimes were trowelled
   And jezebelled to peasant lips
   Though She smelt the fires
   That licked limbs higher
   To the tortured cunts of accomplices
  
   So ends this twisted fable's worth
   And though spared the pyre's bite
   By dint of nobled bloodlined birth
   Her sins [crimes] garnered Her no respite
  
   Forever severed from the thrill of coming night
   Where slow Death alone could grant Her flight
  
   "The Spirits have all but fled judgement
   I rot, alone, insane,
   Where the forest whispers puce laments for me
   From amidst the pine and wreathed wolfsbane
   Beyond these walls, wherein condemned
   To the gloom of an austere tomb
   I pace with feral madness sent
   Through the pale beams of a guiltless moon
   Who, bereft of necrologies, thus
   Commands creation over the earth
   Whilst I resign my lips to death
   A slow cold kiss that chides rebirth
   Though one last wish is bequathed by fate
   My beauty shalt wilt, unseen
   Save for twin black eyes that shalt come to take
   My soul to peace or Hell for company"
  
   My soul to Hell for company