Athwart The Place of Tombs

A cry that tingles to the shivering stars

sounds like what I do not wish to hear

on a night when my nerves threaten

mutiny on the Captain of my sanity.

Hard keeping it quiet in the skull room,

all the voices talking over each other,

chatter of electrochemical inhabitants

who would fall silent with a double-tap.

And anyway, the call to arms is not

a case of hair-suspended swords, or

the rattling terror of bagpipes unleashed

by hirsute-legged stutterers in kilts.

Listen to the horrid things they grunt!

But moving on, we hear the heavy hammers

of the neighbours coming down on

their goth-adjacent son, lodged in

sunny Bummerville, where the pansies

manifest a fancy violet shade never 

witnessed beyond its boundaries.

Now everyone is coming out to see

what all the effin racket is about —

the lady in bathrobe and curlers,

the dude in the yellow wife-beater,

the urchins boasting spider legs and faces.

I don’t love everyone, but I don’t 

hate anyone really except for people

who hate me for whatever reason.

And for this reason I am vilified.

I wear my horns of ignominy proudly, I admit,

even when the season should forbid it,

as in summer when the lolling head perspires

and the sleepy little village is beset by fires.