V. 2, #210: October 25, 2013

I just saw Papi's dog run down my street,
if you could call it running. One leg gone,
another just a useless piece of meat
that hung there as he hobbled toward my lawn.

He's obviously in pain, and I'd feel bad
but for the fact that dog's angry and mean,
with foam all down his jowls like he was mad.
More rank grotesquerie you've never seen.

On moonlit nights in Autumn that hound bays
for hours, and the sound is like a soul
in Hell. It makes me shiver in my bed.
Those blood-red eyes, that tongue as black as coal,
that smell like he's been nosing something dead...
and no one's seen old Papi now for days.

V. 2, #208: October 23, 2013 ("Night of the Werewolf's Wife")

Lawrence, we have to talk. Tonight the moon
is full, and I just have to have my say.
If you don't stop this foolishness, and soon,
I swear to God I'm calling it a day!

I've heard the story half a hundred times:
the beast that bit, the gypsy, blah blah blah.
Let's face it--that old hag's panhandling dimes
and mocking you, halfway to Omaha!

That silver star she said you ought to wear
is tin. You're not a wild, bloodthirsty cur.
And plus--you're bald. I said it! Yes! So there!
That's why you yearn for supernatural fur!

Now come inside and get back in your clothes.
Don't make me come out there and smack your nose.

V. 2, #207: October 22, 2013 ("Zé do Caixão")

The Undertaker stood behind the tomb
and drummed his taloned nails upon the stone.
He smiled to think of every splintered bone
he'd placed inside the crypt. There still was room.

The girl stood weeping near the parish priest
as four young village men let out the ropes
that lowered to his rest the one her hopes
had centered on. Well, that was done, at least.

Soon he would call upon his hunchbacked slave
to bring her to his flat. Then he would see
if she was strong enough to bear his son.
If so, he would know immortality
through blood; if not, he'd find another one.
Joe smiled, his eyes and soul black as the grave.

V. 2, #205: October 20, 2013

It sits upon the lower playroom shelf,
its shoulders shrouded with a layer of dust.
The cymbals it once held have gone to rust.
Its yellowed teeth grin like the Fiend himself.

A tattered hat sits on its plastic head,
a pin-striped vest pulled tight around its waist.
The shards of that glass dome that once encased
the thing lie all around. Its eyes are red.

Once, long ago, a child put in the key
and wound the spring inside till it was tight.
He never could have known what he had done.
And now, the blasted thing's the only one
who ever moves, applauding every night
its handiwork. And no one knows but me.

V. 2, #204: October 19, 2013 ("Soliloquy at The Slaughtered Lamb")

Why can't they just stay off the fucking moors?
I warn them every time they stop to rest
and have a pint. But no, they clear the doors
and head straight off the path, like they know best.

It's not like someone living in this town
would know when it's not safe to be abroad.
You see me out there when the sun goes down?
Fuck no! But hell, I'm just a rustic sod.

Go on, explore the moonlit, soggy plains
and laugh at me, your superstitious host.
We townsfolk will collect your torn remains
and send them to your mum next Royal Post.

Melt down the silver, tally up the gold,
and turn the locks. Christ, this is getting old.

V. 2, #196: October 11, 2013

He hiked the old trail, back over the pass
between the hills that led to Finder's place.
The wisps of cloud drew round the moon like lace.
The lake was like a purple sheet of glass.

He tarried by the water, kicking stones,
entranced by cricket and cicadia song.
He might have stayed an hour, or all night long.
The birch trees held bare branches up, like bones.

And all that he remembers of the thing
that rose out of the water there and spoke
to him, is how the bright, pale moonlight shone
like fire upon the simple silver ring
she wore, and how she moaned and went to smoke
before his eyes. He woke cold, and alone.

V. 2, #175: September 20, 2013

Below the lab, where kings kept enemies,
and chains encircle wrists long gone to bone,
the madman's failure festers, like disease,
and drags its claws across the living stone.

It's fed on table scraps, and bits of meat
the doctor grows in cultures he creates.
Sometimes a nosy cop makes for a treat,
but mostly it lies in the dark, and waits.

Its Father, not indifferent to its pain,
has promised one day to concoct a friend;
but even with its faulty, malformed brain
the Creature can foresee this story's end.

At night it glares up through the dungeon bars,
and when it's very lucky, glimpses stars.

V. 2, #164: September 9, 2013

He's sealed the windows, bought a sensor light,
and put two brand new deadlocks on the door,
made sure his chimney flue shuts nice and tight.
She won't be coming round here anymore.

There's garlic in the kitchen on a rope,
and cryptic circles drawn on every floor.
Black candles, too. Now he can only hope
she won't be coming round here anymore.

He keeps some holy water by the bed
and on the nightstand, books of ancient lore,
plus warding charms to use against the dead:
don't let her come around here anymore.

Midnight, she comes, more rotten than before.
"Love, please--don't come around here anymore."

V. 2, #150: August 26, 2013 ("The Phantom's Secret")

Beneath the Opera House it's damp and cold,
with bats the size of flying Pekingese
(One bonus re: the mask, it keeps out mold,
but gets a little yucky when I sneeze.)

But still, it's not so bad. The sound's sublime
performance nights. Acoustics are the key.
Otello, Traviata--makes the slime
and cobwebs almost bearable for me.

Of course that street's two-way. When I get down
and make my underground pipe organ sing,
my mournful chords go blasting through the town!
It spooks Parisian kids like anything.

But one thing makes a heaven of this tomb:
the peephole in the divas' dressing room!

V. 2, #137: August 12, 2013

There's something going on next door. The lights
are on all night, but no one comes or goes.
There's music, usually: a string quartet
plays something in a minor key. Then, late,
a shadow flits across the crimson drapes
like someone dancing just beyond the pane,
in some shape that is not a human one.

I called the local cops the first few nights,
but they won't come, 'cause everybody knows
the place has stood empty for years. And yet,
beyond the rotting porch and rusted gate,
there's something haunted, misshapen, that apes
a human life, but cannot quite contain
its foul, true form. It's gone before the sun.

V. 2, #129, August 4, 2013

He's old now, all his research prizes lined
on shelves beside the model of the brain
he made, books annotated to explain
his methodologies--how he refined

and altered DNA from donor cells,
nurtured them in a dish until the two
pink crenelated domes emerged and grew,
then joined to build the temple wherein dwells

that mystery, the Mind. Since then his fame
has grown much faster than a germ could sprout
on agar in a lab. The hulking brute
he planted that brain in, which bears his name
(mistakenly) he doesn't talk about.
Since it's most likely dead, the point is moot.

V. 2, #124; July 30, 2013

The  kingdom fell on dark days--all the knights,
whose skulls did not adorn his throne, had fled.
The earls and dukes had given up their rights
to that cursed, blasted land. The beast that fed

upon the serfs and vassals that remained
lay undead in his crypt, fat as a leech.
His nails were black with earth, pale white lips stained
with every brave man's blood, as if to teach

all humankind what price is paid for sin,
in this world and the next; to show there's worse
awaiting man than simple death--his skin
a parchment on which God hath writ His curse:

"Here is the end of Pride and Vanity,
the mouth of Hell agape--it waits for thee."

V. 2, #103: July 9, 2013

Young Gunther haunts this room. He was a child
who caught the pox in 1865.
He's friendly to the guests--a little wild,
but kids are all the same, dead or alive.

His best friend is our Bogeyman named Bob.
He's ugly, thin, and glum, but still quite nice.
He lives under the bed (hey, that's his job)
to snatch at toes with fingers cold as ice.

The attic houses three sisterly shades
who leapt out of the window on a whim.
Down in the basement, teeth as keen as blades,
there's Ashtaroth--we'd best steer clear of him.

Round back, a dozen restless spirits roam--
it isn't much, but still, we call it home.

V. 2, #75: June 11, 2013

The tall man never moved; he simply stood
stock still, under the shadow of the trees.
Leaves swirled around him like a swarm of bees.
His grinning lips stretched farther than they should.

With thirty yards between him and the pane
of glass that shut the night wind from my room,
his eyes still shone like twin coals in the gloom.
Above, the moonlit cloudbanks threatened rain.

It felt like hours, eyes fixed on that blank stare,
my teddy bear clutched tight. I could not cry,
could barely even breathe--until at last
the storm broke. Lightning tumbled from the sky
brought momentary blindness; when it passed,
I turned to call my mother.

                                             He was there.

V. 2, #70: June 6, 2013

She said her friend Max was invisible,
and only spoke when grown-ups weren't around.
Her parents thought the notion risible,
of course, but cute. And then one day they found

their dining chairs stacked like a pyramid,
and arcane symbols scratched into the floor.
The kitten disappeared, their keys were hid,
and late at night, small hands rattled their door.

Her parents frowned and sent the girl to bed
without her snack. The attic floorboards groaned.
Blood drizzled thick from every shower head,
and something in the basement pitched and moaned.

She giggles in her room. She likes this game.
She knows that Max is really not his name.

V. 2, #67: June 3, 2013 (The Creature's Lament)

This used to be a quiet neighborhood,
three million years ago, or maybe four.
Lagoon was clean, fish plentiful and good.
On sunny days, I'd bask right on the shore.

But then the water turned an inky shade--
who knows the reason? Crocodiles appeared
to fight for food. Not many of us stayed,
and those who did turned taciturn and weird.

Now I'm the last to bear my species' name.
I swim these shadowed waters solitaire
and longingly gaze up watch the dame
do butterfly and breast strokes, unaware.

She's lovely...but c'mon. It couldn't work.
Those kind of thoughts make Gillmen go berserk.

V. 2, #63: May 30, 2013

The zombies shamble up and down the aisles,
their jaws agape, their eyes all glazed and red.
Not one will shift his arms nor turn his head
to mark another's passage. No one smiles.

The zombies' brains don't rot. They're not blank slates.
Their skulls are crammed with figures, lines of code
to be debugged. It's neural overload
that keeps them in their sad, subhuman states.

Yes, once they lived. Their hands held warmth and sense--
but that was long ago. Now, fingers curled
to keyboard-scratching claws, they shun the world
and haunt their cubicles like revenants.

They stumble out for coffee, stiff and slow.
Don't look them in the eye--just let them go.

V. 2, #50: May 17, 2013

The doctor doesn't know where he went wrong,
but something's got his Creature out of sorts.
He plays his PS3 the whole day long
and never bathes, not even after sports;

He eats five meals a day, as many snacks,
and watches TV like it was his job.
Ask him to clean his room, and he reacts
as if you were some crazed, torch-bearing mob!

Invites friends over without asking first,
throws parties that make matchsticks of the lab,
and when confronted, screams "Dad, you're the worst!
I never asked to be raised from the slab!"

"Oh horrors!" quoth the doc, "That kid of mine
has grown into a Teenage Frankenstein!"

 

V. 2, #48: May 15, 2013

I was a Monster for the FBI
back in my younger days. The scientists
fused to my back the arms of octopi,
and gave me a gorilla's arms and fists.

For watchfulness while in the field, my eyes
were deemed too weak, so half a dozen more
were grafted on--eagles' and dragonflies'.
For fearsomeness, a lion's teeth and roar.

I'd rustle gangsters, sting spies with my tail,
and cripple crooked cops, given the chance.
Those were the days! You should have seen them wail
in terror, drop their loot and shit their pants!

Now I'm retired, and glory days are done.
Except for Halloween--that's always fun.

 

V. 2, #46: May 13, 2013

We helped the doc move boxes--homemade crates
of pine and cedar. Research cores, he said,
extracted from some cave, encased in lead,
and stored. He paid us twice our normal rates.

The next day Peter's leg began to swell.
His foot took on a sickly greenish hue.
The doc said there was nothing he could do
but get some rest and hope all would be well.

And now it's been three days since we've seen Pete,
and one since paramedics found remains
they think must be the doc's, but can't be sure.
But worse: they found footprints out to the street,
three-toed and clawed, that match the bloody stains
I tracked to Pete's apartment's splintered door.