When, in middle-dark
of stone-cold night,
your face appears
at my pane, revenant,
I shall run downstairs
in bare feet and pyjamas
to let you in.
Will fling my arms around you,
with interwoven fingers
lock them in a hug,
tight as our history.
xii. 2024
This table of noisy eating –
strange faces, chance meetings.
That half-profile:
alabaster skin,
hair pulled back
behind an ear.
Two heads turn, simultaneous
in unknowing silence,
pupil-to-pupil
question the hunger
before cheeks redden,
then turn aside.
On the threshold of grace
an upturned corner of the mouth –
darshan, a signal
at the synapse.
Dark energy
so slight, so brief
it could last for decades,
would shatter your granite statue
should you let it.
xi. 2024
There’s a creepy knock on the door,
a Permatan mask at the window.
But the frame is painted shut,
it will not open –
even to the shriek of children’s laughter.
You do not live on Elm Street yet.
The man behind that face,
you dreamt him dead
just yesterday.
Stiffed in a long-planned plot.
Not by telescopic execution,
nor clumsy piece reached past
the flailing arms of bodyguards.
Rather
the personal touch
of a stiletto slid
between shirt buttons, deep
into his left ventricle.
Silent
as a deportation order
served at night.
It was so easy,
who would have thought?
Blood floods his white-shirt front,
and bigly
stains the wide red tie.
Step back.
In your mind’s eye, witness
colour drain from his cheeks,
the radiotoxic cadmium wig
scrabbling to the floor
like a mutant guinea pig.
Many, many people are saying
he had a really tremendous relationship with God
and good genes, such good genes.
It matters not. Dead means dead.
Unless,
as you pause the first spade
of freshly dug earth,
blade held in mid-air,
there’s the flicker of a soundbite
beneath those rubber eyelids.
And then the ghastly joke’s on us.
Night overtakes day and we must choose.
Trick or treat?
x. 2024
