Guillotine Jim's Tale - A ghostly poem from a few years back

Gather close my kin, lean in to the fire
as I tell this tale of woe and the wages of sin
for Washington Irving's tale of the horseman
can only hold a dim candle indeed to this yarn
of the fate of Guillotine Jim the gangster ghost
who is damned to wander in Hell's fires forever
brought low by the curses of many young girls
whose ponies he defiled to scare them senseless.

Now Jim was the one you hear the tales of
who did the deed few would confess to
of chopping of the heads of many lil' Flicka's
and leaving them on preteen girls beds as omens
to their daddies to keep their mouths shut
about what they had seen or heard in bars
when drinking beneath their station to find
some silly floozie to take the place in bed
of the frigid wives they had married in haste
or over bad gambling debts they could not pay.

After decades of ruling the streets of the Big Apple
with his chainsaw and the heads of too many mares
he chopped into the wrong thoroughbred herd
and made enemies with a wicked coven of girls
who had found the paths of darkness in grimoires
better left unmentioned, untouched, and forgotten
Those gals had been scarred by Jim's evil in their souls
and sold them to Satan without a single regret
for the revenge of which you are about to be told

Satan heard the offers, and took their souls,
and for once held up his end of the bargain
heading out to the pastures of Sheol to find
the stallion of midnight's darkest moments.
He loped off its head and sent it to gather in
a sinner long unrepentant for his actions
and torture him with his own worst fears
to keep the souls of thirteen young pure hearts
to quench his lusts in forever and ever.

The beast had screamed when its pate was torn
from his sleek shadowy neck that night
and tore off as charged to gather up a rider
and take down to meet his damnation
Fire blazed up from that trachel exposed
as he trod the avenues and alleys searching
for the man who destroyed little girls' hearts
to bring him down to his proper level.
Night after night, once the hunt began
Jim lived in fear of being caught by the beast
for on his first glimpse of that ghostly creature
he knew it was crafted to be his fitting end.

At last after months, the horse caught the mobster
and kicked him out of his seat in some bistro
before a crowd that stampeded out in fear
as the headless stallion claimed his rider
by tossing Jim aboard its razor spined back
to be cut in a million places dear to the man
who soon was sheathed in Hell's fiery blaze
to scream in fear as borne along the roads
he had taken his own prey down in days before
to chop their heads off in Central Park
leaving the bodies to rot, and leaving the heads
in the beds of innocent young children.

They say the Stallion took him deep into Hades
others claim he rides the plains of Purgatory
I heard a tale he races in Newark against bullet bikes.
But all know his fate, and reason the mobs stopped
leaving the pates of ponies in beds these days
As Guillotine Jim still does ride at the head of the parade
every All Hollow's Eve for now and eternity
leading thirteen girls who sold their souls to see
him burn in hell for harming their ponies
down to damnation for ever more.

2010- Dyfedd Rex