When you think of poetry you don’t think of horror, but maybe you should. Poems are all about expressing emotions and while most poems I think of are about describing something beautiful, you could also use poetry to explain something dreadful. Fear and desire are strong emotions so it stands to reason that there should be some great poems out there that are all about horror.

Fear and Desire by S.A. Gambino and Michael McCarty is a collection of poems all about the primal emotion of terror.What I liked about this book was how it covers the horror genre so well. There are some poems that are funny, some have monsters and some are about real emotion. For instance in the poem No Escape we hear about someone trapped somewhere without bars, chains or locks. They describe pain but it’s not physical and they scream but only on the inside. I loved this poem because it was psychological, it could have been about a job, a bad relationship or just life in general. We don’t know for sure but it felt personal and really hit home for me.

Another poem that felt emotional and personal was The Mind, this one is about the feeling of anxiety and how sometimes life and all the information around you is too much to bare. One of the lines here is: “Taking in the entire world, Mind goes into a chaotic twirl. Hypersensitivity is so much to take. A mind That’s constantly awake.” Who hasn’t felt like what’s described in this poem? At this point in the book I found myself just simply thinking: “Wow!”

While there are some very personal feelings in these poems there is also a sense of fun here. In Zombie Love we hear about what love is like for flesh eaters. This one hits on love, comedy and horror. We get the description of a zombie couple eating someone and it ends with the line: “Zombie lovers rise to an upright stand and walking away hand and hand..” Another similar poem is My Cannibal Girlfriend. I love how this one says that dating a cannibal is never easy because when you kiss them you taste someone else.

Horror, desire and comedy can all go hand in hand and this book covers it all. Another poem I loved here was It Has No Name. Here we get a description of a female creature climbing out of the swamp looking for a sweet delicious man to eat. I love how lyrical this poem is and how it describes the lust of a monster for a man. Another poem that sounds like the lyrics of a song and has a great rhyme is Carnival Of Souls. This one describes a soul after death and the decent to purgatory because its to late to repent. “A Mortician’s transition Formaldehyde ride The Carnival Of Souls Where you go when you die.

I have to admit a lot of times I don’t understand poetry, I think that’s because the meaning is always open to interpretation and it’s about something personal to the author.. You have your own idea what it’s about but the writer may have had something else in mind. In the case of Fear And Desire some poems made me think while others made me smile and it also appealed to the horror fan that I am. . This is an entertaining and quick read, if you love poetry and horror you have to get it. ( )