The Toils of the Doyles

By Jordan Witham

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I can feel him under my skin

Pulling my face into a grin 

He’s insisting it’s for the best

To forever be their guest 

This house’s constant buzz

Is to connected to the fuzz

Their connected minds

Should I open the blinds?

The Gloom bends my brain

But it cannot hide her pain

Ruth’s ghost is wandering 

Full of sadness, pondering 

I try to speak to her

In my wakeful dreams 

But most is a blur 

All I hear are screams 

Francis is the good one

Though Howard has the gun 

I won’t bear their food

I think I’m a bit screwed 

The medicine can help

But Virgil makes me yelp

Francis is pretty cute

But he’s quiet as a flute 

I look at my hand

Now suddenly bland 

But once bloodied

My mind’s been muddied 

I fall to my feet

This fungus likes to cheat 

Swaying my actions

I must escape this bastion 

But I must stay strong

Ruth wasn’t in the wrong 

I must finish her story 

Even if I go out in glory 

But there too is poor old Agnes 

Her story I considered drabness  

Her body, the roots of this madness 

With fire I ended her sadness

Her sleeping face I shall wake 

The doom of the Gloom I will create 

Sending cruel Virgil to his knees 

As I silence these bees 

When I started writing this poem, I thought of a specific scene in Halo 3 where a marine talks about his fellow marines being infected by the parasite The Flood. He says: “they were all infected! I could see it crawling… sliming around beneath their sin!” I wrote this poem because I have always been a fan of body horror. I was first introduced to body horror at a young age, playing Halo 3. This is why my first inspiration for this poem is The Flood from the game series Halo. The Flood is a parasitic life form who infect other life and mutate their bodies. Their first goal in an outbreak is to compile enough bodies to combine them to make a Gravemind. This Gravemind then controls them as a hivemind. Obviously, Agnes being the central point of the hivemind known as The Gloom in the story has heavy similarities to the Gravemind in Halo. This flood has always been a very intelligent, smart, witty, and creative opponent in the Halo games. Just like Howard, Virgil and Fourance. Halo is a game I grew up playing, and I still play today. The Flood has always been an incredibly interesting fictional parasite. Halo lore has always been incredibly fascinating to me. When someone is infected and taken over by the flood, they are effectively killed, but their mind, all their memories, are absorbed into The Gravemind’s hivemind. The Gravemind’s name being a funny coincidence of where The Gloom is located, inside Agnes who was buried alive. In the poem I tried to keep Neomi’s sarcastic and witty personality, making fun of how Francis is a very quiet, ‘unmanly’ man. Also how she sarcastically thinks about opening the blinds, knowing The Gloom hates sunlight. Also to note is how in both the book and the game series, people can become infected via spores when an infestation has reached a critical point. 

My other inspiration is a particular aspect of Christianity. Oh yeah, I’m going there!In the novel the Doyle family eats babies to become closer to The Gloom. This reminded me of how in Christianity Jesus would give bread and wine to his disciples, proclaiming it to be his flesh and blood. Communion, which is the Christian ritual in which bread and wine are given to all, proclaimed to be the flesh and blood of Christ, is similar, and even possibly the inspiration for the Doyle family immediately eating a newborn baby to become closer to the gloom. Also the idea of ascending to a higher place, where death is absent, aka the gloom. I included the two images to show how my inspirations reflect the themes of Mexican Gothic. Also to note, when I start writing a poem it usually starts with one or two lines which pop into my head. I then write them down on my phone and later on I put them in a doc and then pull out my trusty sidekick; RhymeZone! RhymeZone is an amazing tool because it often shows me words I would’ve never thought of using myself. It has also shown me words I never knew existed. I sometimes feel like I’m ‘cheating’ but it just works! I then use a method I call ‘scaffolding’ which is when I put the number of syllables in a line at the end of each line, this allows me to more easily match the syllable count of rhyming lines, making the poem read more smoothly. At the end of the day, I love writing poetry because I’m always making something new, while using bits and pieces of previously known knowledge. I’m giving and receiving new life, new art. Poetry is such an amazing method of expressing myself, and also expressing my thoughts on topics and themes. From vinyl records (yes, I have written poetry about vinyl records) to body horror!