Three Halloween Poems.

 

Ghosts of Chernobyl

Uncertainty is the stuff any place is made of. In

The abandoned city music is played for the cleaners,

Especially the ones who don’t believe in ghosts. Where

They go into buildings they pull the curtains away

From the windows. The emptiness is extra protection.

Uncertainty fills their ears where music can’t

Reach, where the walls have turned it back against

Itself into cold pockets. Watch: a window breaks.

Two seconds later uncertainty is surgically extracted

By airborne needles. The eye believed more quickly,

But sound came to fill in the cracks. The cleaners go

Forward in their white suits. Somewhere ahead

Is food without the ghosts of teeth, without the weird

Mouths that come down into basements. The deer left.

If they came back the most terrible sound wouldn’t

Be the clack of their feet on the pavement but between,

The choke of Is that you? like a hook in the throat

Would spin ghosts out of every corner.

 

Bermuda Triangle

Scylla took six,

Charybdis took all.

Did you really think

The choice was

Difficult?

The bowl of blood

You brought wasn’t enough

To keep the cyanide

Fingers of the dead

Away. You’ll suck

The exhaust

Of their tailpipes

Whether you want it or not.

The ship is grounded

In the shoals

And soon branches

Will grow from its sails

Across continents, across

The centuries. The force

That pushed the continents

Apart is pushing them back

Together. Auroras and earthquakes

Are only the creak of the rigging.

They’re only the opening,

The collision of whirlpools

Against waterspouts, against

The gale that forms the eye

Of the hurricane.

The only answer

To whether or not you’ll have to board

This ship is you’re a fool

If you believe there was a beginning

When you could have said No.

 

Blood Pudding

Between the thousand year leftover

Stick candy and the bad beer

It’s no wonder I’m craving blood.

I’ll extend the food chain

Past ticks, mosquitoes, leeches,

Lampreys, and my brethren bats,

Where my ancestors hail from,

Between the steppes and the Black Sea,

The undead aren’t unknown.

Perhaps that explains the desire,

A craving for proteins closest to my own.

Whatever the reason

Human beings are now in season.