Magister Renfield

Simon MacCulloch

The worms that fed on wizard’s flesh are here,

As fat with wizard’s wisdom as you please;

A careful man has little harm to fear

From such ungainly predators as these.

I keep them in these little tight-sealed jars

And from them glean the secrets of the stars.

No, no, of course they haven’t learned to talk;

To grow the parts they need for human speech

Sprout heads, and limbs with which to learn to walk,

Takes years that I shall keep beyond their reach,

For long before they lose the need to crawl

My plan is to assimilate them all.

That’s right, I do to them as they have done

To my esteemed late colleague; when devoured

(I take them daily, slowly, one by one)

Their memories, by my brain cells re-empowered,

Are mine, with those they innocently stole

By feasting on my friend’s corpse-prisoned soul.

Oh yes, I know his knowledge drove him mad;

And thus the subtle beauty of my scheme:

To piece together all that can be had

But render it as harmless as a dream,

Because the horror of a human mind

Is something I shall surely leave behind.

It works both ways, you see: the souls of worms

May fatten and instruct the form of Man;

And I intend to meet on equal terms

The chaos of the cosmos, for I can

Conceive of no way better to know God

Than joining Him a-squirm within the sod.

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and writes poetry for a variety of journals - Spectral Realms, Dreams and Nightmares, Black Petals, Pulsebeat etc.