Preview edition — Poet of Chilling Shivers is still in progress. The poem is as it appears in the video; the commentary is a working draft.
My tale of one night when fright came right past eight won't make you feel alright.
Fright maneuvered more as the clock struck twelve, sending shivers to thrive as coldness evolved.
Alone with a dying flickering torchlight in a power out, horror in seconds was about to clout.
In my room of portraits, I woke up with a loud scream from a dream to the unfriendliest of sight.
As cool, meek and artistic the portraits were by day, they looked grotesque and gimmicking at night.
Thoughts of taking them to an exquisite exhibition will be executed once I exit, for I disliked some of their existence
Like an unseen trick, a crash of the painting of a creepy figure I just dreamt made me jerk fearfully to the door.
Blindly walking on the corridor, hands reaching for the nothingness, reliance on memory was the only guidance.
Another louder crash made my heart beat faster than my footsteps, nearly falling as I hit the exit.
Outside, my mood changed to terror from a harsh attack of a hissing of a cat from a neighborhood.
Turning on defense mode and hushing it, a figure in hood with a masquerade leapt from the shadows like a raid without trade.
As he paced forward quickly, spinning knives in hands, I heard the loudest crash of a portrait from my room.
Time froze in absolute shock as the power abruptly came on with dazzling lights everywhere in high resolution.
As I tried covering my eyes, the figure and the cat walked backwards in the darkness to my stupefaction and it was the strangest fact.
A breeze of calmness touched my head as I entered the mansion wondering how a person could escape a fight which may had end in crimson.
Peeping to my room for the last time, I wondered why to now the familiar portraits of a cat and an angel crashed from their angles
Poet of Chilling Shivers · Hear it on the channel ↗
Commentary
This poem retells a single night of fear, from the first flicker of a failing torchlight to the crash of a portrait. Long, breathless lines and rhymes that land like footsteps keep the reader moving as fast as the speaker.
The tale begins on a night when “fright came right past eight,” and by midnight “shivers” thrive as “coldness evolved.” Alone with “a dying flickering torchlight” in a power cut, the speaker wakes from a dream in a room of portraits that look “grotesque and gimmicking at night.”
A crash sends the speaker “fearfully to the door,” walking blindly along a corridor with “hands reaching for the nothingness.” Outside, a hissing cat and “a figure in hood with a masquerade” leap from the shadows, “spinning knives in hands.”
Then “the power abruptly came on,” and the figure and the cat “walked backwards in the darkness.” The speaker enters the mansion in “a breeze of calmness” and looks back at the portraits “of a cat and an angel” that crashed “from their angles,” leaving the night’s fright unexplained.