Poetry

AS HE IS LED OUT

And you thought I was a fellow mammal!
I tore off the mantle
I am more like than un-like
though you will lay the weight on strange.

I took a solid thing,
long-handled, inelegant
and swung it at
a glass-fronted cabinet.

I left a pockmarked wall
in a state of adolescence,
prolonged and well-fed.
I will get you in your beds.

I will come for your children,
a wicked, slinking thing
a content of the closet.
You will abhor my mother as the one who bore me.

I am so no longer one of you that you
do not know what you should do:
every object broken hurts you,
resists your clumsy glue.

You will hesitate on the edge of sleep,
finger the key that locks you in,
rosary tablets, sedative beads
on a single string.

I am the demolition ball,
I am the madman in the hall.
No-one sees the regular stiletto,
small, limited to self-harm.

You will see this.
You will not be able to deny it.
It is an event:
you will keep me in a circus tent.

You, already lying in your casket,
are busy lining it with trinkets.
I will reduce it
with my blunt instrument.

All your associations will go,
each thing a vessel.
You will wander in a state of amnesia,
without souvenirs to orient you.

You will doubt what you knew of me,
your character summary.
I annihilate.
I set fire to paper plates.