Meet Vincent

The Poem...

Vincent Malloy is seven years old

He's polite and always does as he's told

For a boy his age, he's considerate and nice

But he wants to be just like Vincent Price.

He doesn't mind living with his sister, dog, and cats

Though he'd rather share a home with spiders and bats

There he could reflect on the horrors he has invented and wander dark hallways alone and

tormented.

Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him

But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum

He likes to experiment on his dog Abocrombie

In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie.

So that he and his horrible zombie dog

could go searching for victims in the London fog

His thoughts aren't only of ghoulish crime

He likes to paint and read to pass some of the time

While other kids read books like "Go Jane Go"

Vincent's favorite author is Edgar Allen Poe.

One night while reading a gruesome tale

he read a passage that made him turn pale

Such horrible news he could not survive

For his beautiful wife had been buried alive

He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead

Unaware that her grave was his mother's flower bed.

His mother sent Vincent off to his room

He knew he'd been banished to the tower of doom

where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life

alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife.

While alone and insane incased in his doom

Vincent's mother burst suddenly into the room

She said, "If you want, you can go out and play

It's sunny outside and a beautiful day."

Vincent tried to talk but he just couldn't speak

the years of isolation had made him quite weak

So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:

"I'm possessed by this house and can never leave it again."

His mother said, "You are NOT possessed and you are NOT almost dead

These games you play are all in your head

You are NOT Vincent Price, you're Vincent Malloy

You're not tormented or insane, you're just a young boy

You're seven years old, and you are my son

I want you to get outside and have some real fun."

Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall

While Vincent backed slowly against the wall

The room started to sway, to shiver and creak

His horrored insanity had reached its peak

He saw Abocrombie, his zombie slave

and heard his wife call from beyond the grave.

She spoke through her coffin and made ghoulish demands

While through cracking walls reached skeleton hands

Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams

swept his mad laughter to terrified screams.

To escape the badness, he reached for the door

but fell limp and lifeless down on the floor

His voice was soft and very slow

As he quoted "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe:

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted...Nevermore."

(The 'Vincent'-Poem, written by Tim Burton.

Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven'

and children's stories by Dr. Seuss).