I am captured on a journey
into the nostalgia of things once known
in lands forgotten and worlds unfound.
I find I am standing on a terrace
of translucent azure marble
amid pillars of fallen temples.
I mock the windless waters of lakes unfathomable
and the reflections of a puerperal sunset
over a land of marvelous romance
and yet dim in black abomination.
Into the dark green depths of cedar forests I roam,
clinging like a hellish nimbus, pale as a corposant.
I spy the gleam of blue diamonds
in the amber morning mist
among venomous green snakes.
I am somewhere miles beyond Taprobane
and other strange and hidden cities,
their brazen domes and slender pinnacles
of gold and copper
that pierce the heaven of heated Lazuli
in a dim glow bending
like a comet's tail in the distance.
On into the Cthulhu Mythos,
I find myself seeking the Great Ones
who inhabited Earth eons ago,
as I learn the horrendous truths
of the dwellings nearby,
and glimpse the untratelluric chasms
veiled behind reality,
its heavy stone doors bolted shut.
In cosmic horror I plunge into sea-gales
and to the gates of Frenâie and Ximes.
I catch the sight of phosphor-starry domes
shimmering deep in the buried waters,
their changing luminescence wavering
in sheer daemonic strangeness.
I see the chilling blur of a black and semi-serpentine beast
that turns and invades my dreams
and hungrily tears at my conscious armor
with rows of sharp, serrate teeth.
I grow accustomed to the flaring lights of uncanny blue
among the rugged peaks of the Eiglophian range
that rise star-ward toward jagged constellations
and meet their diffused fate
between the earth and the moon
and on toward the galaxies.
I assimilate the smell of brimstone and burning flesh
rising over the battlements in sulfurous fires
and stand amid the thin haze of hellish-blue vapors.
I rest in a garden of visions,
the venture to eerie lands of lost worlds,
from Atlantis to Hyperborea,
and take the voyage to Sfanomoë
to witness the ghastly end
of the magician Malygris.
I recite a last incantation darkly
at the intimidating Door to Saturn
and vanish completely in the mazes of Maal Dweb.
I disappear on a quest to the Planet of the Dead,
and only by chance return before the light of day.
I hear the devilish tales of Statmpra Zeiros,
and view the coming of the great White Worm.
I then journey over the grisly heights of the Eiglophians,
past deadly alpin catoblepas, to reach the Seven Geases-
and challenge their unreasonable terms.
In Xiccarph I meet with the flower-woman,
and we battle the demons of the flower.
We take the Plutonian Drug
and together view the Gorgon's statue
in unspeakable fear.
I am exhausted, now wandering deleriously, aimlessly,
I find myself in Northern Glacier regions.
Strange Idols lay at my cold, tired feet
-relics of a continent lost, imbued with its own Genius Loci.
This I realize is a discovery
of unsurpassable beauty, and also cruelty-
where riches, thieves, jungles, fates,
and mysterious ruined cities
in weed-grown embrasures and exotic colors
in the perpetual autumnal sky
exist along side unimaginable horrors
of protoplasmic life
that issue forth to confront wayward adventurers,
that slither with unbelievable speed
and celerity of motion,
and with toothless mouths of amazing capacity
engulf all in a cataclysmic Epiphany of Death.
I cheat death, or simply forget that I had died,
and face immortality, love, evil, and discovery
in moon-touched solitude on a soundless Lunar Path.
In an extensive vault of a lofty mausoleum
a solitary figure emerges, beautiful, mystifying.
"I am the Iamia Morthvlla", she softly announces,
and takes my hand...
I will record these tales and of everything that befell me
in the etchings of my mind,
and leave it in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua
as a warning to any who are foolish enough
to be tempted to embark on such an adventure as this-
leave the legends and lost treasures be
and go back the way you came and wait...
These tales will be enough to gnaw at the memory of men,
though the creatures be slain
and the worlds sealed in a brazen box
in a secret chamber of my mental crypt.
When you come, it will be opened,
and the dreadful tales
will fill many years and decades to come
with a yearning for the vast expanses
of these bizarre, outlandish, distant,
odd, extraordinary, wonderful,
sometimes weird, but above all strange
lost worlds and forgotten times!