Oh, say, there's the entrance, hazed by the burning light,
Its banners proudly hailed it to be a garden of delight,
Broad banisters gave pause, as the steps then declined,
A sulfurous smell, a damning reek, one pungent yet refined.
(We took our seats amid a packed house)
The rockette's faces' reddened glare, their legs kicking high in the air,
Gave solid truth to one's mind, that this theater was still there,
Oh, say, does that infernal place, still sell its tickets engraved,
To those with the money, and the insanity of the depraved?

On the stage, now dimly seen, through mists of time and shadow,
A horrid glimpse of a slimy thing that froze solid one's bones and marrow,
What is it, cried a thousand throats, yet all who spoke knew the answer,
Twas our doubtful host, a creature ages old, a long-aged necromancer.
Our eyes stared in hypnotized fashion, upon this crooked apparition,
As it cavorted about, making abstruse signs, in lurid caparison,
A mist billowed up upon us, its origins that not of steam,
Our throats were subtly strangled, so that we could not scream.
And now! The matter of the evening, a thing that could not be dreamed.

The evening now a sullen blur, too dark to be called mere night,
suddenly the lights were gone, surrounded we by darkened light,
The theater now a phantasm, a place lost to time and space,
Our place now no longer home, but that of an elder race,
Our bones lengthened painfully, our faces each grew a trio of eyes,
And our minds became painful, twisted, eerie, yet no sighs,
Kuh-THULL-Hoo came upon the stage, his fringe dangling eerie,
His speech a garbled whispering, yet our minds found it leery.
But that was then; and this, now; and sudden, all was *right*.
The way the rule of all the worlds was might made it right.
And power, ours, to grip and gnash, given by one decree,
The one before us giving it us, and it made us very hungry.
In ordered ranks, we marched out of a realm miles deep,
Our brains empty of all thought, save one that caused unsleep,
For now, we sought our master's will, and that matter alone,
and we would do that unceasing, as long as we we're bone.