The Ten Most Metal Poems
There’s something about poetry that speaks to metalheads. Perhaps it’s the fact that unlike prose, which can often be flubbed in the name of melodrama or mainstream acceptability, poetry needs to be pointed. As with a killer riff or blastbeat, every word of a poem needs to earn its keep, and those that are superfluous are very obviously so. Like metal, when poetry is bad it is just fucking awful. When it’s good, there’s nothing better in this world.
Sadly, many metalheads have also been driven away from poetry due to a mindset that it’s only for eggheads, faux-intellectuals, and other dickfors who like to brag that they don’t enjoy cheap beer. This has led to a Bill-and-Ted-ish belief that simplistic song lyrics are better than great poetry, because they aren’t hoity-toity. But the best poems are as visceral and affective as any lyrics (by the way, if you ever rhyme “self” with “shelf,” especially claiming that your heart has been put or left “back on the shelf,” you are one of God’s special assholes). The mystique of poetry being impenetrable was just created by nose-hoisters who don’t want to admit that an everyday headbanger can enjoy Pablo Neruda as much as they can.
So here, for your enjoyment, is a list of what I consider the ten most metal poems. Rather than comment on why they’re metal, I figured I would just print them in their entirety, and you can understand what I’m talking about. Yes, Poe’s in there, but no, it’s not “The Raven” (it’s the other one). Enjoy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Brahma”
Man mastered the mammoth and horse, and Man was the Lord of the Earth.
He compassed the earth therein, and Man was the Lord of the Sea.
He drove the celestial team, and man was the Lord of the Fire.
The last of the demons defeated, for Man is the Lord of the Air.
Till the high gods witness at length that Man is the Lord of his spirit.
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking and festering womb.
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she’d united in one.
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowed with a liquid and thickening stream
On the animate rags of her clothes.
Rushing and bubbling with health.
One could say that this carcass, blown with vague breath,
Lived in increasing itself.
Like babbling brooks and the breeze,
Or the grain that a man with a winnowing-fan
Turns with a rhythmical ease.
Like a sketch that is left on the page
Which the artist forgot and can only complete
On the canvas, with memory’s aid.
Eyed us with angry distaste,
Awaiting the moment to snatch from the bones
The morsel she’d dropped in her haste.
Horrible, filthy, undone,
O sun of my nature and star of my eyes,
My passion, my angel in one!
After the rites have been read,
Under the weeds, under blossoming grass
As you moulder with bones of the dead.
Who cherish your body so tine,
That I am the keeper for corpses of love
Of the form, and the essence divine!
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
They burned a witch in Bingham Square
Last Friday afternoon.
The faggot-smoke was blacker than
The shadows on the moon;
The licking flames were strangely green
Like fox-fire on the fen…
And she who cursed the godly folk
Will never curse again.
They burned a witch in Bingham Square;
Before the village gate.
A huswife raised a skinny hand
To damn her, tense with hate.
A huckster threw a jagged stone—
Her pallid cheek ran red…
But there was something scornful in
The way she held her head.
They burned a witch in Bingham Square;
Her eyes were terror-wild.
She was a slight, a comely maid,
No taller than a child.
They bound her fast against the stake
And laughed to see her fear…
Her red lips muttered secret words
That no one dared to hear.
They burned a witch in Bingham Square—
But ere she swooned with pain
And ere her bones were sodden ash
Beneath the sudden rain,
She set her mark upon that throng…
For time can not erase
The echo of her anguished cries,
The memory of her face.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
