Ghost Confessions: Poems - PREORDER

PREORDER - SHIPPING IN NOVEMBER 2025

All preordered copies of this title will be signed by John Shirley and cover artist Dan Sauer.

INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS - The shipping rates/duties from the USA are painfully high, so we've found a workaround. Please feel free to send a message through our contact page for the details.

“No other spirit has from my head
Torn such otherworldly visions
Of wonder & horror, awe & dread.”

Novelist, screenwriter, songwriter and Bram Stoker Award-winning short story writer John Shirley has made an indelible mark in a wide array of genres, including horror, science fiction, dark fantasy, and is one of the originators of Cyberpunk. In 2021, his first poetry collection, The Voice of the Burning House, expanded his oeuvre into verse. His second collection, Ghost Confessions, continues his foray into poetic lands. Shirley’s poetic concerns are perhaps more wide-ranging than a good deal of the weird poetry in the field. Herein you will find explorations of doom and destruction, love and alienation; dark gnosis and environmental collapse; even Lovecraftian horrors and Halloween. Ghost Confessions is meant to unsettle, to evoke the frisson of the world of shadows—even to provoke fear. Some of his poems offer a chance for elegiac catharsis. And a few are just for fun. Most of these poems have underlying themes: efforts to make sense of life and death, to find meaning in a chaotic universe. Some even reach for metaphysical insight and epiphany. All are worth your time and attention.

Trade Paperback - 6x9 inches Approx. 108 pages with vintage illustrations

“John Shirley’s poetry is smooth and powerful. If it doesn’t give you bad dreams, you weren’t paying attention.” —TIM POWERS, Winner of the World Fantasy Award and author of Last Call and On Stranger Tides

“One of our best and most singular writers. A powerhouse of ideas and imagery.” —WILLIAM GIBSON, Author of Neuromancer

"...one of speculative fiction’s wildest and greatest talents.” —PETER ATKINS, author of Morningstar and screenwriter of Hellraiser 2, and Wishmaster

CONTENTS:

The Author Risks a Preface
Three Sonnets of the Weird
Memento Mori
Disembodied Disputations
The Hour when Shadows Writhe
Underlying Cause
Who Plays the Music for the Dance of Chaos
Where Do I Go
And Then He Died
The Thing that Broke Johansen
The Undying Folly
Cauldron of Spring
Houses as Boxes of Drama
We Are Becoming Demonic Machines
All the Kids Trippin’
The Floating Eye Amuses Itself
No Refuge
Scientists Discover that Time is Not an Illusion but an Object
Box in My Head
Half Alive
That Was Me
Be You Damned, Thomas Hardy
Halloween Will Wait Till You’re Not Looking
Angry Angel
The Map Unrecognized
I Met a Girl in a Cemetery
On the Amputation of a Toe
I Am Electricity
There’s an Ocean Between Us
Party Now, Pay Later
The Puppet Dance
Jenga Poem
Toxic Sunset
Bad Feelings, Good Feelings
Two Demons and a Bird
And I’ll Burn Like a Vampire in the Sun
A Ghost Confession
Holy Fire Thunderhoof
Gaia’s Reckoning
State of Mind
The Spider Light
The Slums of Heaven
Daddy He’s a Murderer, Little Boy, Jimmy Boy
The Comet is Coming
Convenience is Doom
The Torrent