Poe, 216 years on

In a darkened chamber

shadows twist and writhe

Pale light spills through cracked panes

illuminating dust motes

The air, thick with the scent of age and decay

A raven, black as a void,

perches on the windowsill

Its eyes, piercing, stare into the soul

Murmurs of lost hopes and unfulfilled

dreams linger in the corners

Quill in hand, he writes feverishly

Ink, like blood, stains the parchment

with thoughts

Driven by an insatiable

hunger for the macabre

Loneliness clings to him,

a relentless spectre

Tormented by visions of the departed

He seeks consolation in the written word,

an eternal struggle

Haunted by silence, he listens

To groanings of the damned

and reverberating sorrows

He captures their essence,

binding them in prose

His heart, a labyrinth of grief and longing

Beats with a melancholy cadence

He exists in liminal spaces

between life and death

In the end,

he remains

A solitary figure,

surrounded by the phantoms of his creation

Eternally bound to the darkness,

a poet of the night.