It’s Tuesday Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub. Today’s theme is “making much of madness.
Each day I am tormented when I
search the newspaper obituary column
and find you unlisted.
I am afraid to leave my apartment:
you could be everywhere.
I check and double-check the six
locks bolted to my splitting wooden door. Then,
with one eye closed I stealthily
peek through my hole in the fraying
yellow window shade; perhaps
I will spot you among the gutter-litter—
scraping, twisting,
slithering back and forth,
up and down my street like
a rabid snake shedding its festering skin.
from my hole in the shade with
one eye closed, I begin to dissect
feature by feature, the crazy-wino faces
street people and policemen, terrified
I might accidentally catch a glimpse of your
maniacal smile or your
obsidian-hate eyes.
knowing what it would do to me
should the phone ring now—
I lift the grimy beige receiver from its cracked cradle;
ripping and jabbing at the knotted Curly-Q
cord with preschooler scissors.
and letting them slide
to the mustard-colored rug stained
with
Marlboro butts smeared
again I peek
through my hole in the shade with one eye closed
and know you’re lurking everywhere.
disturbingly and grittily compiled and the opening lines set the scene for this excellent personification of paranoia
“and find you unlisted.
I am afraid to leave my apartment:
you could be everywhere.”
thanks for making so much of madness!
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My pleasure, Laura! Making madness comes so easily for me :-)!
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I can really feel this so deeply due to all the details of that receiver, the cigarette butts and the winos down at the street.
Harrowing.
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Thank so much, Bjorn.
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Terror can seem so much like madness. A stalker feeds off of it. I like the ambiguity, where the reader chooses.
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Thank you, >Lisa. 🙂
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You are very welcome, Susan.
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Paranoia is parasitical, for sure. This is such a strong jab to the gut, so real it causes bruising just to read it.
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Thanks, Glenn! I aim for a good gut jab. 🙂
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It’s quite a twist of fate that your dark poem followed Linda’s brightly lit one, Susan! You’ve captured paranoia and fear so well in the opening stanza and then give us a glint of madness in the lines:
‘…perhaps
I will spot you among the gutter-litter—
scraping, twisting,
slithering back and forth’.
The idea of someone peeking through a hole in a yellow shade with one eye closed is creepy and, in some ways, your poem reminds me of short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
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This is truly terrifying. Scanning the obits and hoping to find a name.
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Much appreciated, purple one! 🙂
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The fear is palpable in your dark sketch of paranoia!
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Thank you!
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