The dried up lake
contrived to look both
surprised & embarrassed
like a lady in a bad dream
wearing no clothes
whilst singing in church
or doing the supermarket shop.
When I say 'lake'
I mean the body of water
that lived up
in the old quarry.
It always gave us kids
nightmares.
Our parents
always warned us not to
go there
...but go there
we always did 'cos
it was dangerous.
And that was its
attraction.
Danger
barely tamed and still feral.
It would give us the creeps
just looking at it in sunlight.
The police tape
looked real pretty
fluttering in the slight breeze
like an art installation
that everyone who was
someone
deemed important
without knowing its meaning
or if
it had one.
But hey what do I know?
The lake
wore its dead body
like a cheap glass ring
pretending it was diamond.
When I say dead body
I mean skeleton.
The skeleton
wore concrete shoes
as if it had stepped straight from
a corny gangster movie
riddled
with cliché.
It just grinned
at the police
flash photography
as if it were a celebrity
famous for being
a celebrity.
He still wore
a heavy gold crucifix
on a thick chain
around its neck
that shone in the sun.
The sun smiled down
as if it were smiling down
on a picnic
or an ordinary walk in the park
as if it were innocent
of the things it seen.
'Hey, I'm Summer
being Summer...! '
it seemed to say
'Dead guy eh...what a bummer! '
The dead guy
was alive in his death
as if he were soaking up
being the center of attention.
And yeah sure
it was just another ordinary Summer
when I was 9 or ten
or something like that
but this was just
the beginning of the story...
...the rest of the story
was somewhere else.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
a delicious thriller...now, about the rest of the story....waiting....waiting...for the rest of the story! ! Great write!