The Phantoms

(featured in the December 2019 special poetry edition of The Write Launch)

Here they come… on they go…

One by one in a row…

Misanthropic phantoms

Drifting by me on the street;

All snuffed candelabrums,

No warmth to meet;

Shadows del Dìa de Muertos

Like distant echoes from the vigil,

Gregarious as gargoyles to greet

Whilst they all a waltzin’ thru my peripheral,

Yet always on their passin’ but a chill I feel,

Each secrets hushed and skeletons concealed.

A brood of bad bananas, rude & unpeeled.

Where’ve you been?

Where’d you dwell?

Bless me your heaven.

Confess me your hell.

I yearn to turn you over like a stone,

Cruise your every crevice, flesh ‘n’ bone;

Kick down the catacomb

& catapult flower petals

Up your uptight spine

to startle your tomb

W/ a sunflower bloom;

Veins fomented for the finest

Wines to flow,

Drawing agape the dreary drape

‘til we’re both aglow

Like grinnin’ happy-go-lucky children again

Lavished in the light of Lothlorien —

Now incandescent in the distance.

And when we’ve basked in

Our fill of social sustenance,

Our souls exquisite as bloodstones

and its subsequent dookie

Buried in the kitty litter of time,

Let’s make like Mickey and Mallory Knox,

Freed from society’s spooky pantomime,

And hop the next train

right out of town.

No

strings

attached.