Cor Cordium: Percy Shelley on the Shore

I wrote this poem, and I thought I'd post it. It has what I would consider horrific themes, and is about Percy Shelley, the poet, and his wife Mary, who wrote Frankenstien.


Cor Cordium: Percy Shelley on the Shore

“Nothing besides remains:”

And Byron, that
Bastard Byron with his satyr’s hoof,
Lights the driftwood with a flint.

Too early for Lucifer matches.
Not yet the workers with phossy jaw necrosis,
With bones that glow green white bright in the darkness.
Eaten to the bone as Percy was eaten.

Sparks sizzle, go out against the wetness.

Heart meat is
Tough,
Springy to the teeth that
Gnaw its rubber gaskets, a
Fleshy phoenix egg boiled beyond rebirth,
Last to burn.

And Byron plucks the
Heart out of ashes and sand
To take home in his waistcoat pocket.

And Mary keeps it on her desk.

Twenty nine years sealed in a jar:
Her Modern Prometheus, her
Homunculus husband.





Note:

The quote is line 12 of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”