The Spare Rib From Romeo

By Chris Tait

At bogs of malaria
There, paddled crews of visitors
Grasping blueprints for Dracula
And Frankenstein with bolts and scars

The spare rib from Romeo
He and Byron were identical
To readers he could take a bow
With his love life in pentacles

He fathered Nosferatu
Trailblazing gothic genres
Science fiction’s mottos
Contemporaries sung opera

Ink blood from tomatoes
His vocabulary was ouija
Ghost stories in a grotto
By exiles banned from stigma

Bedtime stories for comas
With destruction of his diaries
Memoirs which were enigma
Left pockmarks in all libraries

At a bohemian soiree
They sculpted from commas
A clubfoot which wrote poetry
Beasts scraped on tombs as trauma

With soulmates Mary and Percy
Monkeys feasted on bananas
Along with a peacock and a dog
Feathers and barks added drama

Provided cues for prodigies
With stockings of wine from santa
Served in skulls out of abbeys
Macabre tongues of mantras



Inspiration behind the poem:

What motivated me was the party which Byron had with his friends.  They told ghost stories which went on to inspire two very influential books “Dracula” and “Frankenstein.”  I kept this method in mind and played with words to come up with the poem.


Chris Tait is a poet, playwright and spoken word artist from Shetland and living in Glasgow.  She reads at spoken word events and on the radio. Her play “A Toon Built Apo Shenanigans,” and her poetry books “Literary Skulduggery,” “Rumpelstiltskin Illusions” and “Tweetieshee In The Caves” are available on Amazon.