The Dark Man (poem)

The poem follows an unnamed 'dark man' who rides the rails observing everything around him. The poem takes a sinister turn when the narrator confesses to rape.

Stephen King wrote the poem on the back of a placemat in a college restaurant. According to King, the idea for the poem came out of nowhere: "this guy in cowboy boots who moved around on the roads, mostly hitchhiking at night, always wore jeans and a denim jacket... The thing about him that really attracted me was the idea of the villain as somebody who was always on the outside looking in and hated people who had good fellowship and good conversation and friends."[1] This mysterious dark man was eventually built into Randall Flagg, a primary antagonist in many of King's books, starting with The Stand.

The poem was initially published in the literary magazines Ubris in 1969 and Moth in 1970. In 2004, Cemetery Dance reprinted it in The Devil's Wine, a hardcover collection of poems. In 2013, they announced an illustrated version of the poem with illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne.[3] It was included in Monster Verse, a 2014 collection from the Everyman Library.

• Stephen King short fiction bibliography