Eden Underground: Poetry of Darkness

By Alessandro Manzetti

Another snake, another tree, another Eve.

A Bram Stoker Awards® winning dark poetry collection from Italy’s Alessandro Manzetti.

Eden Underground is a surreal journey into obsessions and aberrations of the modern world and its darker side, which often takes control of the situation. Madness, violence, aberrant sex, war, hallucinations, sadism, disturbing archetypes: these are the black fruits of human loneliness, these are the bloody roots of Eden Underground.

In this untold world, men and women build their deformed, artificial underground Eden, where they can unleash their dark side.

Death is the hidden queen of these strange places designed by human alienation: harem of silicone dolls who come to life, abandoned warehouses with copper tubs full of broken pieces of Eve, a bloody collection of copies of the first primordial woman, imaginary worlds inspired by the ghosts of the drug, small Eden dug into the bowels of the sand of war, trenches for refuge from too much horror, the religious fanaticisms and their heretics and violent Eden stained with blood, open air glittering brothels turned into landfills of souls and lost loves.

Haven't you ever heard the loneliness knocking at your door? Or the steps of our dark side, freed from the body and the cage of our conscience, that is coming to take us with a shimmering cleaver in its hand? In Eden Underground you can hear all these ghostly noises, too real, too close.

Includes:

• The Last Prey
• The Monkey with the Big Head
• Pieces of Eden
• Dead Circus
• Green Apples
• Koo-o
• Interiora II
• Eastern Heaven
• Red Monsoon
• A Modern Berserker
• The Half Bride
• Eden Underground
• Carlos, Diego, Vamos!
• The Wrath Sings, Goddess
• The Rime of the Mad Mariner
• Lacrimosa
• The Pawn Shop
• The Cockroach King
• The Garden
• Dames de Voyage
• Electric Monkeys
• The Tenth Circle
• Almost to the End

Book Cover by Vincent Chong, back cover by Ben Baldwin, and illustrations by Paolo Di Orazio.

Proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing - Tales from the Darkest Depths

Eden Underground eBook categories:

• Poetry collection
• Kindle Short Reads Poems
• Disturbing Suspense fiction
• Horror Suspense
• Metaphysical poetry
• Horror Psychological thriller
• Horror poetry
• Dark Fantasy Horror
• Fantasy poetry
• Disturbing psychological horror

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9780994662620

Alessandro Manzetti

ALESSANDRO MANZETTI (Rome, Italy) is a Bram Stoker Award-winning (and 7-time nominee) author, editor, and translator of horror fiction and dark poetry whose work has been published extensively in Italian, including novels, short and long fiction, poetry, essays, and collections. English publications include his novel Naraka - The Ultimate Human Breeding, the collections The Garden of Delight, The Massacre of the Mermaids, The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (with Paolo Di Orazio) and the poetry collections No Mercy, Eden Underground, War (with Marge Simon) Sacrificial Nights (with Bruce Boston) and Venus Intervention (with Corrine de Winter). His story collection The Garden of Delight has been nominated for the Splatterpunk Awards 2018 He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death Vol 1, The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (with Daniele Bonfanti), Splatterpunk Awards 2019 nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in Italian, USA, and UK magazines, such as Dark Moon Digest, Splatterpunk Zine, Disturbed Digest, The Horror Zine, Illumen, Devolution Z, Recompose, Polu Texni, Nothing's Sacred Vol. 4, and anthologies such as Splatterpunk Forever, Best Hardcore Horror of the Year Vol. 2 and Vol. 4, Bones III, Rhysling Anthology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 3 and 4, The Beauty of Death Vol 1 and 2, Mar Dulce, I Sogni del Diavolo, Danze Eretiche Vol. 2, Il Buio Dentro, and the forthcoming anthologies Midnight Under the Big Top (Cemetery Dance), Rhysling Antology 2019 and Sorrow Anthology. He is an HWA Active member, a former HWA Board of Trustees member, and lives in Trieste (Italy).

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE LAST PREY

THE MONKEY WITH THE BIG HEAD

PIECES OF EDEN

THE DEAD CIRCUS

GREEN APPLES

KOO-O

INTERIORA II

EASTERN HEAVEN

RED MONSOON

A MODERN BERSERKER

THE HALF BRIDE

EDEN UNDERGROUND

CARLOS, DIEGO,VAMOS!

THE WRATH SINGS, GODDESS

THE RIME OF THE MAD MARINER

LACRIMOSA

THE PAWN SHOP

THE COCKROACH KING

THE GARDEN

DAMES DE VOYAGE

ELECTRIC MONKEYS

THE TENTH CIRCLE

ALMOST TO THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright 2015 Crystal Lake Publishing

www.crystallakepub.com

(receive a free eBook by joining our newsletter)

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9946626-7-5

Cover Design:

Vincent Chong—http://www.vincentchong-art.co.uk/

Illustrations:

Paolo Di Orazio—http://paolodiorazio.wordpress.com

Back Cover Design:

Ben Baldwin—http://www.benbaldwin.co.uk/

Interior Layout:

Lori Michelle—www.theauthorsalley.com

Proofread by:

Jacqui Corn-Uys and Paula Limbaugh

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Monkey with the Big Head has been previously published in the Spring 2015 issue of The Horror Zine Magazine. Interiora II has been previously published in the second edition of the collection The Shaman and Other Shadows. Green Apples will appear in the June issue of the Disturbed Digest.

THE LAST PREY

Eva has a snake tattooed on her arm

and a blue orchid in her hair;

fossil ovaries

are carved on the buckle

of her chain mail belt;

her hands are full of blood.

I’m hiding in the tall grass,

grey as the sky,

as the rats show me the way

to escape.

I’m the last man

in this heretic Eden, in this game preserve.

I’m just a flesh trophy,

an aquarium of dried, floating sperm,

poisoned by a powerful pesticide.

I crawl like a worm.

I hear Eva’s steps

trampling my trail,

her hallucinated chants;

the smell of female and nightmare

spread all around,

dripping on dry branches.

There is no horizon

to reach.

The land is endless.

A rustle behind me,

then in front, left and right.

I’m fucked, surrounded.

I stand up unsteadily.

I give myself to the cloned Amazons,

to the many copies of Eva,

singing as sirens without a sea,

rubbing male skulls on their thighs.

THE MONKEY WITH THE BIG HEAD

The man with the big head

crosses the gate of the asylum.

He leaves behind himself the smell of iron,

the rough sheets and the fleas’