“STRATUM” is best categorized as a gothic narrative poem blending dark fantasy, supernatural horror, and military gothic within a modernized ballad structure. Its strongest achievement is the sustained atmosphere of mythic dread, created through vivid, cinematic imagery and tightly controlled tonal consistency. The poem evokes the cadence of an old oral legend while presenting a layered descent through grave, earth, tomb, and hidden relic that mirrors the title’s geological symbolism. Particularly effective are the concrete visual details, which give the work a tactile, haunting immediacy. The restrained approach to exposition strengthens the mystery, allowing the poem to suggest an entire hidden mythology without over-explaining it. The piece succeeds as a dark, atmospheric ballad of buried violence, dormant power, and memory entombed beneath history. As a newly written poem for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella, it has not yet been assigned to a chapbook.
“STRATUM”
drawn with casket from his grave
an old ghost soldier bold and brave
with cold steel eyes that never slept
for many years in vigil kept
into the starry skies he stares
calm and cool the midnight air
and buried last in silver chains
that hobble so his last remains
for one day he was called to life
he howled and drew a kabar knife
and joined in spirit to his flesh
in hot pursuit of sin and death
but now he’s flat upon his back
and bound this day to not attack
and whatever next the orders be
he waits prepared when he’s set free
and there beside the coffin door
a shovel stabs the garden floor
the moonlit shadow that it casts
extends far off into the past
and in the hollow of the dirt
six foot into mother earth
an old man cussing pains out loud
and wiping sweat off from his brow
the old man sweeps away with broom
by torchlight cast into the tomb
a stratum tier of fieldstone rocks
that hides from sight an old black box
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