Meeting the Master of Macabre Poetry [C.A. Smith]

Meeting the Master of Macabre
[Dedicated to Clark A. Smith]


I met CAS on the docks of Poseidonia
(In my dreams last night)
He was playing the god Ougabalys:
With three horns
Above his double crown;
He had eyes of the dead
As if he had pulled them out of a
Rotting head; incredible, insane
But ghouls and spirits came
To see him all the same:
Yes, even in the dead lands he
Had fame, lapsing fame.

(Then, in the second part of
My dream): He was standing on
The decks of some serpent looking ship
Sailing off to unknown seas,
While sailors were cutting off his legs
Below his trembling knees….
Foaming he was, from his brow
Enormous lumps of sweat and muck
But he never bellowed once
Below the gloomy eternal sky,
With camel breath, he just sighed.

I would guess the sea worms
Are now his eternal guests? And other
Ocean-sea serpents that swim
Or monsters with fins;
From where I seen him last,
There is a lot of bellowing...
Or were they laughs?

#1545 11/2/2006



Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a close friend with the famous H.P. Lovecraft, who is best known for his horror, in particular short store horror, and especially, “The Dunwich Horror”. He died at an early age of cancer; whereas, Mr. Smith lived on to pick up the slack. Smith, was pure poet for the most part, but got involved I do believe—unwillingly—with short stories to pay bills, and did ok in that genre with the magazines of his day of that genre. Smith wrote about 700 poems, in now what are considered classic books; horror, science-fiction fantasy, or mythos as they called them in his day. He does write startling tales of intrigue, incorporates violence behind most of his solidly packed themes. Some of his most chilling works I feel, and mysterious, are in his art work, paintings and clay figurines, if that is what you can call these little devils. And so in my poem, I simply plant a few reflecting images of his phantasmagoric worlds, in this case, the dead world into his realm once again; I don’t think he’ll mind.
In addition to Smith’s Lovecraft relationship George Sterling, the great poet from San Francisco, of images, tutored him.