Gaslight Horror

Key turn

~*~

Light 

The lamp

~*~

Without 

Flowing gas

The wick's not damp

~*~

Waltzing down 

A corridor, lighting up 

Upon passing each door

Rupturing yet impenetrably black

~*~

Creatures gushing out

Deja vu 

A sickening feeling

Emanates from their parade 

They skittishly escape their pack

~*~

The imperceptible enemy 

Always hovering over your shoulder

Silently, right behind 

Waiting to steer you

Into the perilous path 

Prepared for conditioning your mind

~*~

You feel the menace

Yet can not prove it

Your foe seems keen on that fact

Weaving in and out

With guile and tact

You can smell the gas, feel the fear

Like a rat about to leap from a raft

~*~

Is there an escape?

Have you waited too long?

The lamp's been turned over

Fire is already on the spread

Have you ever seen 

Something with more grace and speed?

You hear the siren call down the burning hall

Hissing in rage, one exit from my perfect cage

~*~

Without warning, the floor disappears 

In charred ashes and coals

With nothing to stand on

Nothing to search for

Not finding a handhold

Walls surrounding you 

Burnt completely away

All that's visible, crumbles 

What was not, now in the way

~*~

You find yourself looking on with horror 

Begging for the sad delusion

Reality more macabre than apparitions

Spun to keep you corralled and docile

Now, you take your first real breath

Filling your lungs, but you're sickened still

Finding the air is dank, filled with coal dust, and cholera

You return to the inferno

Lie down where you know once stood a bed

Closing your eyes forever more

K.B. Silver

For NaPoWriMo I thought I would share something I have been working on with you. This is the first attempt at a poetic form I have been playing with for a while. I call it a Decible.

A quick overview of what a Decible is and how to write one:

The Decible poem is composed of ten stanzas in total.

The first stanza begins with one line, increasing one line at a time, ending at ten lines.

Each stanza increases the number of syllables per line, from one syllable in the first line until you compose the tenth stanza with ten lines of ten syllables each.

This, as my first attempt, doesn't hold to the form yet. I had only considered lines by this time and had not yet included syllable structure. Let me know what you think in the comments!