ken*again
Home Contents Contributors Poetry Prose Art And another thing... Contact
ken*again
Three Poems
by
What
a way to end it!
Drinking
my own urine, addicted to codeine and other drugs,
My
hair matted, my fingernails gnarled,
rarely
leaving the bed.
In
the beginning I was having so much fun –
a
pioneer, bold, daring,
all
wrapped up in my aeronautics, making my movies, scoring chicks.
Then
it all came falling down around my ears.
My
mind crashed when the plane did.
Something
in my mind snapped – mental chaos,
blackout
or whiteout – I couldn’t tell you which.
I
was terrified of everything.
Cats,
dogs, budgies, the outdoors – the walls caved in.
My
world got smaller, became microscopic,
the
little things all seemed enormous –
daily
tasks were far too much for me.
I
took to my bed, a tailor-made thing,
with
levers for this and buttons for that – a contraption.
It
seemed like a safe place,
but
the monsters followed me there too,
screeching
round my ears, hollering their incriminations.
Obsessive-compulsive,
they said –
but
I just liked everything to be ordered and neat – under control.
I
became a spectacle, a freak show, the ultimate recluse,
hidden
away with my fears,
which
grew larger over the years.
The
drugs killed me – kidney failure;
my
body couldn’t take all that medication.
I’m
still a legend though; I have a life beyond the grave.
The
ghost of me lives on – I made my contributions;
shame
about the tragic ending – why couldn’t I have continued
flying
high in the sky?
Duty
You
were always dutiful. It was your
upbringing.
Your
mother drilled it into you. Do unto
others. Help out.
Stay
late and finish the work that others have left,
your
red shoes forcing you to dance and dance, long after the music has stopped
and
everybody else has gone home and you alone in that empty building
with
the slickly polished floor, with stripes and circles painted on it
spinning
and spinning like an out of control toy top.
You
think of me as more carefree than that, feckless, wearing a gold necklace round
my throat
and
skipping blithely through fields of dandelions, or striding the edges of high
cliffs
whistling
to myself, heading into the forest, not watching for wolves
on
my way to Grandma’s house, basket a-swinging.
You
think of me as I was not as I am.
I
too, have worked until I passed out, believed, nodding and smiling,
that
if I just said this or that or did this or that, posed, smiling, for the camera
kissed
this or that arse, I would get what I wanted.
Here,
have my heart, I said, and held the gleaming thing out,
extended,
on the palm of my right hand.
It’s
yours, eat it. I can always grow
another,
in
my special laboratory where I pioneer stem-cell research.
I
am more practical than you think.
Now
it’s my eyes that flick back and
forth, a slippery eel,
wondering
how best to play my hand, resume my vigil, a quiet sentinel,
on
guard, long after everybody else has gone to bed.
I
am awake, after all, and will not resume sleeping
until
the work, which never ends, is done.
They
say you shouldn’t do it – look backwards,
but
they also say you shouldn’t murder and, hey, that never stopped me.
I
had a thing for prostitutes, it’s well known,
I
considered them a blight upon society, vermin we’d be better off without.
My
knife bore the sharpest blade. I
slit their throats, left the corpses where they fell.
It
gave me quite a kick, I was misogynist par excellence,
I
worked at night, a shadow, scuttling from doorway to doorway,
a
creature of the night – here’s the best part; I got away with it,
they
never caught up with me.
I
was a lone wolf, a loner, a dark figure operating on the
as
the streetlamps gleamed overhead - I evaded the hangman and the noose.
All
those others died away, whereas Guy Fawkes and I achieved immortality,
him
with his dastardly plotting and me with my murders.
I
taunted the cops, sent them letters, detailing whether the ladies squealed or
not –
and
once, I mailed them half a kidney, claiming, like
“Wasn’t
good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it”
I wrote,
signed
Jack the Ripper “don’t mind me giving the trade name.”
I
tore out Mary Jane Kelly’s heart, maybe I snacked on that.
Nobody can say.
I
felt no remorse – they said that what I was doing was wrong, but my heart sang
that it was right.
“The
Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing” – what did I mean by
that?
Predictably,
I went to hell, where the devil and I waltz,
