Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Cthulhu Explains - Three Word Wednesday



Thom of Three Word Wednesday offered us these words: Kneel; Nasty; Purr.

I of course immediately thought of H.P. Lovecraft and the Great Old Gods:

Cthulhu Explains

Nasty times of day:
there are two. I try to jump them
best I can most days.
The main way, I dance
past the old dark gods of war,
kneel and pledge my blood.

Then if I find death
bubbling beneath my gill slits
I begin to sing out
all sweetness and light
as if my true tenor purr
could disperse the pain
of holding my soul
back from its old bitter ways.

I just kill for food.

‎August ‎19, ‎2015 10:24 AM

For those who do not follow vintage science fiction and fantasy, Cthulhu is a long time favorite of whom Wiki says this: Cthulhu is a deity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and first introduced in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, the creature has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. Lovecraft depicts Cthulhu as a gigantic entity worshiped by cultists. Cthulhu's anatomy is described as part octopus, part man, and part dragon.

As Wiki writes, one cannot read in the F & SF of the nineteen fifties and sixties for long without encountering at least a reference to Cthulhu if not a cracking good story, as they used to call them.

And as an aside, my maternal grandfather, a Dutch immigrant who participated as a mining engineer in the Alaska Gold Rush even though stone deaf, was known as H.P. Noordwal. Any guy with the initials H.P. can't be all bad... It goes further. For Lovecraft, H.P. stood for Howard Phillips. Howard is morphed from Old Norse Hávarðr, which means "high guard". My grandfather was Hartog Phillipus. Hartog is a Dutch surname and a Jewish given name where Hart relates to "deer" as it sometimes does in English.

To find the other contributors to Three Word Wednesday, click here.

3 comments:

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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