Sorry I Missed You (and other poems)
the pig’s head
There were red faces pinned to the trees along the road as we raced past.
The purple light in the meadows of Halifax, hiding many things moving slowly.
Drove down the dark back roads that would lead us to the pig’s head, severed and laying roadside in a gravel pull off.
My brother spinning the car back around to confirm what he had seen, me pleading in the passenger seat not to go back, but we did.
His lights shown into the pull off with the meadow running right up to it and the darkness of the sky in pursuit. There the pigs head lay, the red glistening end in the dusted light, an ear poking up, the eyes squinting blue like a mans eyes.
The high beams turning on and revealing more red shapes and strands of gore pulled out into the gravel.
Then, rustling up from the meadow something with shoulders, pausing for a moment silhouetted and then back into a frantic movement like a unbalanced saw blade coming straight at us.
My brother and I in a panic, in a crescendo of fear, screaming in the car, the clutch grinding, scrapping into reverse and spinning out into the streets.
The headlights still on high moving our tableau of terror to the view of the desolate street.
The rural back roads of the Halifax, Massachusetts.
Tomorrow was Halloween.
terror man
He believed there were monsters in the house.
Of all shapes and sizes. Nasty things in the dark waiting to be born again in his shallow hapless screams.
Fastened to his bed like a knocker on a door, a mouth gaping and trickling gasps of fear into the darkness as they would come into the room getting closer and closer, moving strangely, silhouetted in the moon light.
In the morning he would wake up, and open his eyes to the same place and the nurse would come in and clean him up, changing the bedding with her face stretched wide across her skull.
It was the same routine every night and as the light in the hallway turned blue he silently waited trembling with horror.
I Think I Might Like Jazz
I am either
getting very old
or
turning black
because
I
simply
can’t get
enough
jazz.
Super Fan
I accidentally watched a baseball game.
Sometimes,
when the moon is in it’s right phase and the stars fall in just the right spots,
I will watch a baseball game.
But,
more often than not it is a complete accident.
That Fucking Talking Baby
That talking baby is still on T.V.
talking about investing and money
and the stock market.
He hasn’t aged a bit,
no wonder.
Dream Horse
I dreamt that scientists had created the smallest breed of horse in the world.
It’s rattled towards me like a wind up toy with tiny black spider eyes.
Who would have thought that a tiny horse could be so frightening?
Gold Rush
They say
there is a
gold rush
and
that is
the scariest
thought of
all.
Because after
all,
who is
rushing towards
your
gold?
torch light
There was a torch burning in the woods. Far off past a small riverbed and at the base of a tall, dark tree line. Motionless, I watched it from the bathroom window. Waiting for it to advance. Waiting for it to vanish, to take life. To burn the forest down.
There were fake spider webs pulled over the bushes and at the corner a neon red bulb cast a dim pool of light into the street.
Somewhere down the road a battery had run low on a novelty that now loosely twirled on a string and quietly moaned a dying warning.
The wind had moved the letters on the light up church boards to read something spaced out and confused.
Ma ny peo ple as k of for give nes s,
few g iv e i t.
D o
n ot fe ar
the en d
w I t h
l ove
in y r
he ar t
The floorboards screamed me to sleep.
Every night,
like a train, screeching towards a blown out bridge or a child on the edge of a cliff.
There were times when I would look out at the flame, billowing in the woods and would wonder, about a great many things.
It wasn’t the end,
but at times,
it resembled it very closely.
