The Macabre Masterpiece: Poems of Horror and Gore by Justin Bienvenue
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Let the red run slowly into the stream
In this river your hands will not be washed clean
Guilt will arise and your skin will stain
Plain and drained to the vein from those you’ve slain

The Macabre Masterpiece is a collection of short poems with a Gothic feel to them, mainly due to the subject matter – blood, vampires, and the like. It attempted to shed new light on this subject matter, using poetry as the medium.

There were various rhyming patterns utilized, and many of the rhymes sounded forced, as if the sentence was purposely convoluted to ensure the rhyme happened at the end of the line. Also of note, there was little to no punctuation, creating a run-on of words with no pauses for breath indicated.

While the blurb promised in-dept poems, most of them were very superficial and could have been giving more depth – more gore, more horror – instead of just simply describing the subject. There was no “showing,” simply “telling” the reader – sometimes in creative ways – how blood looks or how death is.

Quick horror poems portraying vampires, murderers, and blood, The Macabre Masterpiece takes a light-to-the-night and the creatures crawling there, but leaves the reader with only a Dr. Seuss headache.

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