20 YEARS IN HELL(?)

Phil Roberts 1957 (Melbourne)



There was a time starting in ‘68
A time I still remember well,
When through no real fault of my own
I spent twenty years in a living Hell.

A monster we named Muggsly
Had somehow trapped us in his lair,
Like a spider with its sticky web
He kept us tightly in his snare.

We worked from, ‘Can’t see in the morning,’
Until, ‘Can’t see at night,’
Slaves to this evil crawling fiend
Held there by our own fright.

We knew no way to escape him
Our future seemed forlorn,
Until one day in 1976
When our hopes became reborn.

With the help of John and Jock
We loaded up all of our stuff,
And fled for fear of being caught
While Muggsly was sotting in the pub.

Then with our hopes renewed
Denise, Mum, and I settled in Yarraville,
Ecstatic to at last be free
Merely being alive had become a thrill.

Then in the 1990s, I was shocked
When I took time to calculate,
And found that the time we lived in hell
Wasn’t 20 years ... just eight!

THE END
© Copyright 2021, Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

About this poem

One of four linked poems about my father's madness. The other three are: Witchery, The Great Escape, and The Story of Hell House. Witchery is the best, but hardest to understand of the four.

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Written on January 09, 2009

Submitted by PHIL_ROBERTS on June 30, 2021

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
6

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXB BCXC XDXD XEAE XXXX XBXX XFBF XXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 982
Words 193
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3

Phil Roberts

I turn 65 on the 31st of January 2022. I love cats, rock music, and horror fiction and poetry more…

All Phil Roberts poems | Phil Roberts Books

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