Monster Poem by GORDON GILHULY

monster

and this, too, is a form of alchemy
turning the light into dark, the day into night

I have never seen the monster
who lives under my bed
he enters my room every night
sucking my childhood from the air
like blotting paper
monsters are like that
we never see them just
their shadows moving pushed by unseen winds

his wife sits in the kitchen
looking into her teacup watching the tea
grow cold her eyes as dark
as bruises on the inside of an arm
listening
hearing only the darkness

monsters don't like to open doors
they just like to close them
and so he appears a coal-black hole
in the Judas light of the hallway
my eyes are sealed but they register
the absence of light as the conspiratory
door whispers shut
I do not fool him my breathing
betrays me I have not really gone
to Mars in one of the sleek rockets that fill my notebooks

monsters like to whisper your name
as they sit on the side of the bed
if they can capture your name
they will own your soul forever
this monster knows my name
he speaks it like the skeleton rattlings
of the wind in dry winter branches
it is the only human sound
the rest belongs to the animals
gutteral, visceral, the voice of feral dogs slashing the puppy's throat
in the dark bushes

years later in the cedar-thick air
of a sweat lodge this moment will
remember me will smash its way
through the curious etchings on the
glass brick walls of my life
will explain my journey
I will know
why I know
what I know
why I can understand the murderer's
hatred of the world empathize with
that pain that never goes away that
lies thick over everything like a headache

now all I know
is the length of the night
and the sound life makes as it leaves