Winter Child
City’s snowed in.
No one’s about.
Nothing to do but admire the night sky
through rippling red eyes.
Not so much the stars.
But the darkness that holds them in place.
He lives below street level,
a basement apartment.
The window pane
and a hovering streetlamp,
take some of his face,
reflect it back at him.
There’s just enough
paleness to the cheeks,
crimson to the lips,
for him to recognize himself.
It’s bitter out.
And icy as his mother’s heart.
His nightly alley-crawl
is put on hold.
There’s no one to stalk.
No clawing.
His hands have nothing to do
but rub together.
He is very much
a child of winter.
But there’s many a winter night
when he cannot be that child.
Color-Bound
The disease is killing me.
My flesh is a pale yellow.
My hair’s turned aqua.
My fingernails glow green.
As for my eyes,
what once was brown
is now a myriad of colors,
from red to black to blue,
all swirling in the soup
of my failing sight.
I’m slipping away,
begging the doctors
to put me out of my misery.
But they’re enjoying the show too much.
They even invite their colleagues in
to witness my deadly transformation.
I’m worth at least
three papers to the academy,
a spot on TV’s “Illness Of The Week”,
and a Nobel Prize
if they ever find the cure.
I’d rather die
but rotting green is nothing new to them.
The Master
I say your name
on those dark nights
when clouds smother the moon and stars
and branches bow solemnly
at the insistence of drizzle
and I am totally devoid
of feeling for humanity,
on my crazy watch
in these isolated hours of the dead.
If I could only see you,
touch your robes,
sigh in reverence,
hear you speak
from the hollows in your face,
brow wizened,
white columned bones
poking through your cheeks,
tongue sliding over your lips
like a torpedo up its base.
I say your name
as drops slough like snakeskin
from the rim of my chin.
I am an irresolute, cold-hearted,
cut-throat denizen of this netherworld.
If only you knew
where to find me.