White demons, with red laughter
Dreams lost to demonic masters
Souls in the drifting years
Footsteps during proud halls of Belshazzar
Flee far the phantasms of the fire
Swift and sudden they appear
Seizing all by hand and man’s desire
White demons, with red laughter
They weave their thoughts through ours
With goblets filled with charm and wine
Then roar and shake the earth
With their strange enigmatic minds
“…go back to sleep!” a dark night
I tell my weary, unwell wife
Afar I hear red laughter:
Devil Music, demonic Masters!…
Note: Written at my Casa [home], in Lima, Peru, 11:40 PM, 5/11/2006, I was on the third stanza, second line, of the poem “Devil Music: Red Laughter,” and the earthquake came, shook the house, like a roaring train the earth murmured under me, the foundation of the house trembled, and my wife was in another room, came to the library where I was, and I told her (she was ill) to go back to sleep,all would be all right, shortly, and she did, and it was. #1347
This poem is dedicated to the Carmel Group of writers of the 1900s, at the turn of the century: George Sterling, Clark A. Smith, Robert Howard, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Nora May French, H.P. Lovecraft. There will never be another group like i