HOOD by Kevin Cahill

 

In the darkness he sticks to his bones;

unsure why. He is a shrug of stillness.

After years soaking in the shop

he did try, but the hair in the soup

was too much; the ptomaine that stank

in the unspigotted vim.

 

He did try, but the trial

to jabber and cry,

smile,

with the rest of us

was nothing to bear;

so he sits like a frozen bung                                                     

in his shed                                                                                     

a bone-chilling mile from home.                                          

 

Balded, he is a bone stuck in a boy’s toy,

betraying the mud that made him –                                                                                            

his primordial root tingling beneath his skin

silhouettes there in lotus

at the cemetery of tits,

alone in his sickness,

                                  a basilisk.

 

The wall drinks the world

                                         scalds the

bag of knuckles to a spuming black halo,

closed in the hand.

 

                               There cannot be enough

darkness for him. The loathing face

inhales at the gag, still-eyed, reneging.

 

In the dead of night

it is terrible to hear a man

waiting, waiting, failing.

 

Image by: ItsGreg