Dark Poetry Quotes

“Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,
that soft summer morning
round a turning in the path,
the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,
its legs in the air like a woman in need
burning its wedding poisons
like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,
I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,
but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.
I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter
who can no longer smile.
Am I dead?
I must be dead.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Posed In Vein by Stewart Stafford

O Stephanie!
In your cruciform puppetry,
Bloody veins stretched out wiry
To relive in a bondage diary.

Subject mapped as inked skin she wears,
Decorating, desecrating olden snares.
Each needle kiss, a line defined,
A pinprick story rushes her mind.

By candlelight, in her coven deep,
Secrets webbed flies must keep,
Spelled out straight in her hexing book,
Consort Lenore gives a cryptic look.

They tug the strings, the marionette,
Caught in her captor's welcome net.
In artificial light, a social moth's mien,
A wrought, posed, fetishistic scene.

The knots are tight, the ropes defined;
Bodily and in private mind.
This mutual art, a supplicant's plea,
Cut into her Kinbaku diary.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Ouija Board Web by Stewart Stafford

Someone's been in my room,
Helped themselves to my beer.
Bottled my portal to escape,
And left behind a sober fear.

I guess I'll climb the silence,
To the mirror, if I'm still here,
Tap out a drowning rhythm,
To send an S.O.S. so clear.

A phantom knocking from within,
Coins rub my spirit board away,
Voices say breathe out and in,
Darkest night blurs into day.

Moth to the flame in a spider web,
Mummified to twist in the draught,
Here comes the eight-eyed sentinel,
To finish its ice-cold Arachnid craft.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The fragile frequency
on which his nightglare exists
sends desperate
shock waves; subtle static
to infiltrate my daydreams,
breezing over my lips {come back},
knocking faintly on my skin
now once in a while,
reminding me of when
i really did believe strangers
had the best candy

The waves that got through
to me just like we were
one-

back when
I was fragile
too”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Inviting...and other misfortunes

“For Having Offended Thee by Stewart Stafford

A rebirth in my other kingdom,
Deafening choruses of mute vampires,
Stowaway's arrival not of my choice,
Treading water on stranger's ground.

The crunching gravel of past sins,
Fine bone dust of wasted chances,
Weighed down at Purgatory's door,
The gatekeepers nod and admit me.

A hurricane swirl of screaming souls,
Housed within Infinity's planetarium,
Whispers, pleas, a drowning outcry,
Metaphysical smothering of bodily errs.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“People have often asked me, what is fear? Is it the feeling of dread? The sweat of unease? Or is it the knowledge of the unknown future?
No. It is none of these.
Fear is as much alive as it is a soul.
Fear feeds on joy.
It lives in us all.
It is something that can never be cast out of us, as a landlord evicts tenants from a house.
If you go on and tell me, that fear doesn’t live in you.
I would simply turn around and tell you to jump off a tower.
Then we will see who is in the right.”
― Tiano Mattherson, Dusk: Knytehood

“CheckFate by Stewart Stafford

Now hear this about Fate!
Its coils squeezing around you,
Directing your every move,
It is your second skin glue.

Scream unilateral lockdown,
As in Covid fever dream years,
Fate is your silent partner,
Lifer cellmate chained to all your fears.

As you hide in a shack in the Andes,
Fate's squatter gatecrashes to stay,
Tracked by a big cat in the Pampas,
Jaguar-spotted stalker in your DNA.

Fate deals its stacked tarot cards,
Catch-22's lotto winners - broke and few,
A drill sergeant drones' whipped parade
In lockstep as one of Fate's crew.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“A Mountebank Muses by Stewart Stafford

Permit my monstrous vanity to grow,
As I school you in power's stratagem,
And all its dark, dripping uses.

Gentle Nature, beauteous savage,
The human beast a tool of it,
So I shall yield to primal urges.

A "hero", that convenient scarecrow,
Valourous through wicked deeds,
The "unworthy", slain with a judging sword.

Virtue signals at tyranny's bloodlust,
Rending animal flesh with your teeth,
Blind to complicit slaughter and pain.

Crowing masses at fame’s summit,
Unpruned roses of bloody slopes below,
Atrocity, the stepping stone to glory.

I shall wipe the stain off the crown,
And all the crimes that precede it,
Conferred by the fates, entitled for life.

© 2023, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Nothing Man by Stewart Stafford

I return to plague night's wanderers,
Dark hours and thoughts personified,
Driven by this scorching crusade,
Agitation flooding my skewed brain.

Many have tried to kill me and failed,
They think material weapons can work,
I am immaterial and absorb punishment;
An elemental fire they cannot extinguish.

No targets are off limits to me, I fear,
Aye, I am an equal opportunities predator,
Praying for my victims as I prey upon them,
Then am I consumed, at one with darkness.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Smiling in meetings.
Crumbling in the bathroom.
Saying ‘Good morning’ with a steady voice
and a silent wish to disappear
before the sentence ends.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“Mental health became a luxury.
Pain became ‘drama.’
And emotional collapse?
It became a trend — dressed up as a lifestyle.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“It’s not burnout.
It’s the silent collapse
of someone still breathing
only because the body
hasn’t figured out
how to stop on its own.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“I see people. But I don’t see humanity.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“It’s the silent scream of the inner ocean.”
― Phoenix Moon, Reliquary of the Soul

“You left like Prometheus in reverse, stealing the fire and leaving me chained to silence.”
― Rita Kay, Her Fire Touched the Sky: Poems of Trauma, Survival, Healing, and the Quiet Rebuilding of a Soul

“I wear my story like flame on bare skin.”
― Rita Kay, Her Fire Touched the Sky: Poems of Trauma, Survival, Healing, and the Quiet Rebuilding of a Soul

“Full schedules, empty hearts.
Maxed-out memory, corrupted essence.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“Everyone starving...
but not for food.
Starving for meaning.
Starving for touch.
Starving for soul.”
― Phoenix Moon, Emotional Roller Coaster: Confessions of a soul reborn from the ashes

“Even paradise can blister. Even holy things can rot.”
― Diaksha Maharaj, Hold Me While I Decompose

“A Ravaging Sentinel's Vow by Stewart Stafford

State your love for me now —
Agreed, a cracked heart pledge,
Defying your many flaws,
martyring me to betrayal's dredge.

At your darkest dawn —
My fealty oath holds true,
when every back is turned,
a redeeming ravager’s purview.

A sentinel’s dust trail climbs high,
hooves thunder; the sundial stops,
A vow declared, enemies routed,
disaster reined on teetering clifftops.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Leaches Ten Tall by Stewart Stafford

Don't play this game with me,
Predatory whelk of tide pools,
Taint me as Rigoletto to a bawd,
Floundering florist to my bee.

Devotion twisted to a changeling,
Now a jealous twin in the shadows,
From dancing partner to judge;
Delicate consensus to harshest critic.

Slice of cold shoulder sandwich,
Sup the chalice of icy comfort,
Not snowfall on Christmas morn,
Oaken boards trodden in a manger.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Basement Morgue by Stewart Stafford

A reluctant errand to a basement morgue,
No mortal knew what things lurked there,
The elevator shuddered to a halt, opening,
To a scattered boneyard of patient beds.

Totem tchotchkes of a broken system,
Dead corridors stretched left and right,
A charged cold-sweat silence hung,
As a flaccid desk stethoscope rattled.

Buried my nose in my clipboard;
Had to find their machine - now!
A gurney wheeled itself past me,
Disappearing into an anteroom.

A hanging skeleton lunged at me—
Spindly fingers choked me into blackness.
Rousing to bright lights, blinding me;
Icy steel drawers swallowed my screams.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Haunting of Palatka

A ghostly anthology rooted in local lore and Southern mystique. Spirits wander the streets, bridges, and parks of Palatka, whispering stories of love, revenge, and eternal unrest.”
― Thomas Miller

“The Sensitive Scarred by Stewart Stafford

Bizarre monolith world,
We waylaid pilgrims tread
In a whirligig of fair and ill
Serrated lots for drawing.

Consider those without armour,
Senses wounded beyond measure,
With struggles incomprehensible,
The burdened head asphyxiates.

Devoid of several layers of skin,
Internal organs lacerated—daily,
A ribcage so spinelessly cracked,
Clarity's chains relentlessly taut.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Ebb and Flow by Stewart Stafford

Happiness, briefest harbour in a squall;
Tempests funnel us to splintered docks,
High-seas missions to a last port of call,
Fading feast taste of a haven of stasis.

Weather springs with raging misprision,
All things far beyond fingertip calculation,
If we go off course with Fool's Gold vision,
The reefs of avarice shall starkly claim us.

We set sail or are torn from fragile sanctuary,
All these stays, noted in the strangers' ledger,
The Fate Morgana's captain - marine actuary,
Virtual kin crew with fish and fowl companions.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Mortal Tempest by Stewart Stafford

In the tranquil, shaded crypt,
Life's storms batter no more,
Historia, the isolated remnant,
Of an interior remembrance.

The howling gale, a mourner's cry,
Icy tendrils reaching to exert,
The only possible pressure,
On a shell in heedless slumber.

A post-mortem death wish,
Phantom projection of the morbid,
To vacate an urn and soar,
Swirling ash in the mortal tempest.

© 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Interstellar Corduroy Roy by Stewart Stafford

Taunted since he was a boy,
Thorn-crowned “Corduroy Roy”,
Hurled across sanity’s border,
A reluctant thundercloud hoarder.

His spacesuit? Pants! - Shade? Maroon!
Playing soccer-tennis on the moon,
Astronaut dust, his alma mater,
Hitched to Earth in a pocket crater.

Leapfrogged back to terra firma,
Just in time for his dog’s dewormer,
Gravity’s cords in the machine, unclean,
Freed himself from the lunar silt routine.

© 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“A Momentary Flicker by Stewart Stafford

Keeper of pristine candlelight,
In corrupted hourglass time,
Chest-pumped at your "yield"—
So why asset-strip mine?

You claim we shed virginity together,
A lecherous faux-naif purloins truth,
My age will be the years you get—
That collar shall be your noose.

Your crimes are beyond absolution,
Your extant sextant for baleful stars,
Fevered pleas and penitent sighs,
To a confessional's hidden bars.

So why scalpel-slit a seeping scar?
Karma totals defrocked degradation,
A besmeared, hacked-up oil painting—
Damnation's inferno predation.

Your words, woven with deception,
Vanish like smoke from a flame.
From shaded rebirth, I set forth.
I reclaim my dawn, my light, my name.

© 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Scavenger's Ledger by Stewart Stafford

The scratch of a nib on paper
Tells me I am alive, I think.
At this Heaven/Hell midpoint—
A torn throat for a poison drink.

The horizon lit up again tonight,
Rebels fight for futile freedom,
Happiness, a cold, distant stranger,
No gifted transfusion to bleed him.

Willingly failing the audition of life,
Food appears to have lost all taste,
A numb tongue or cheap ingredients,
I cannot let one crumb go to waste.

They’ve finally cured me of love,
Stripped every vestige of me away,
Carrying my grave upon my back,
Their snail slithers from day to day.

© 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Bonfire of Broken Hearts by Stewart Stafford

A shivering man craving warmth,
Mustn't let the fire consume him,
Despite temptation heat flares,
In arousal-seared microseconds.

Lured in with passion's promise,
A stray spark or lick of flame is all
Love ignites into walking fireball—
Devotion's immolation sacrifice.

On a cracked cardiac bonfire,
Toughened muscles take time to burn,
An atrophied, coarse chest slump,
Once burned it is charcoal brittle.

In the hall of mirrors' reflection,
ICU, but do you see any of me?
No salve - a scorched psyche set free.

© 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford