Hand Of Glory Poem by Paul Kesler

Corpse-candle,
fleshly calyx forged in sorcery,
glows as the torpid body
sleeps on a tousled bed.

Little knows the severed hand
what murderous schemes its parent body
carved in life,
or that its transmigration now
invokes a hardly less dubious iniquity:
a sleepless sleep worse, perhaps,
than death itself.

Nor can the somnolent victim
conjure thoughts of tomorrow
or a dream worth remembering,
since memories find no purchase
on the hazardous cliff of a nightmare.

This body harbors no recourse
in the burning talisman,
whose fingers, at the whim of
a cunning sculptor,
open doors in the darkest
vault of an unhallowed night.

It will sprawl, witchery’s puppet,
so long as the sculptor desires or
the smoldering flames
wither the warped thing down
to a cauldron of
mummified leaves.