a rattling toss of bones,
sound of Golgotha gamblers,
on a lead day, color collapsed
to hardening cement,
this sky of sludge and guilt,
and no one home
but a greying man
who can sit and watch TV
or think again of throwing it all away
to begin anew, eyes closed,
giving the dark its complete run
from outside his head, through, to outside again,
leaving him wondering if the dark out there
thinks
like the dark in him.
We wait around to prove our fear,
it seems, unllike that dream
so long ago of the witch,
never quite seen,
just a dying cat voice
from a jagged shadow
out past his window,
beneath a wavering moon
and a live oak tree.
She needed to cook the happiness
that coursed through his house
as his wife and kids slept, lives
some say are built with nothing but deceit:
they were safe, every night crowded
with predators in flesh and invitation.
In the window, he stood.
In the window, he stayed.
Braced for the curse that comes.
He startled awake that night in stutter breaths,
gloried in his long run of legs,
thrust of arms and hands before his face.
And he kept that night refrigerated so fresh,
it comes to him still to take a bite.
Amused, yet, that sure enough—
scrawny neck, little bald head,
hard shell a man's life builds--
the witch had cast a spell
no kiss could fix.
As he reminisced, the easy chair
reclined all the way to sleep deep
into the grey, he smiled at how close
he came to story. Death, make way!
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