A Poem
Joey Banks – Unsplash (trimmed by author)
…
I leave my family abed
(Tucked in and cosy)
And slip outside into something more comfortable
The darkness shrouds my infernal mission
…
The night-fog feels hard ominous implacably
Black and obscuring: a dense layered veil
Hiding deeds and misdeeds, trust and betrayals fall
From the dark and yellow lamplit windows
I smooth down my ebony cloak
Step silently over the shiny black cobbles
Slide into the shadows of back lanes and alleys
…
I descend the hill of grim passages and trammelled tenements
A labyrinth of merciless droll
Under the cover of nacht und nebel
(Such evils befall the world)
My black glove runs lightly over thin steel handrails
Down step by step the alley defiles
Knowing every brick, paver and hole.
I descend.
…
In the distance moonlight touches the thicket of spars and masts
The ships moored dockside; the salty sea-smell of the grubby river
Permeates the bricks and masonry
Curls its miasma into the malodorous mist.
Gas lamps throw up muted halos
Inside their rusty coronas: balls of golden light
Perch atop fluted iron columns
…
I prop in a murky slot
With a view of the drinking house
(I haven’t decided yet, or cast a lot)
Boisterous shouting clanking swearing,
Ruination in their heads, rough loud boasts and
Boy-men broken up chatter
Carry through the candlelit windows
They argue their choppy banter till the barkeep bawls
Enough! Time!
Figures shamble out
Weave their ways this way and that
These drunken oafs
I reach out: hold their hearts, some plump young
Well-meaning, others shrunken ash cinders.
It’s the usual crowd of numbed older men and young bruisers
…
A pair hold each other, struggle up the hill
Pass by gabbing and wavering
I deglove and feel the cool instruments
Arrayed neat as bright pins inside my coat: these
Silvery instruments can split wide a sternum
Trepan a skull or slice and cut in a trice. Plus
Vials of sleep, paralysis ichor and draughts of delirium
(Sometimes I like to hunt in the forest of the city)
…
The two drunkards are gone awassailing
Their unintelligible shanties dying in the fog
I slip, an ephemeron, nearer the ale house
I know, but I don’t know
And stop. Waiting.
…
A figure steps out
Walks stolidly uphill
His gait is more or less sober
Face hidden beneath a short cap
His attention on the uneven coal cobbles
He is the one, he will do
I will be the doer
He walks left disappears down a blind alley
I softly turn out to follow
…
I think a short sharp killing tonight
And take a quick breath of the fetid air
(My heart would thump aloud if I had one)
I pluck out a short handled blade
…
His head bent and wide steps tell me—a sailor
He’s heavy with the briny water:
The stiff salt-spray, his hammock below decks,
Glum eyes inured to the cobalt flat ocean
…
I stealthily close on my unwary intended
He does not sense my baleful presence
So close I can smell his beer and tobacco
Our silhouettes merge
The stiletto drops into my glove
I remember to breathe, then
My right arm leans round him.
I cut the blade
Clean, across his pink throat from ear to ear
…
I hold his collar, knock off his cap
His heart’s life blood pours out
Dark red from the mortal cut
He tries to turn, paws at the wound
But I press him hard against the wall:
He glubs: “Why am I done?”
An upward sweep of the knife cuts the tip of his nose
Then an ear I slice off
His body starts to fold, his wet breath blows bubbles
I follow him down, whisper in his good ear:
“You’ve done nought enough,”
Or some-such ambiguity
…
He slides down the wall, bloodshot soaked torso
And wan face look up at me
What do his sightless eyes see?
The after-light image of an opaque blackguard,
A life-thieving felon
His eyes roll back and I replace his cap at a rakish angle
Wipe cooling blood from the blade on his unlovely coat
Stand above his crumpled body
…
Another corpse, another dead man to add to my tally
That grows by the scores,
He’s the hundredth… or four hundredth?
It doesn’t matter—I don’t keep a diary;
It’s no whim that makes me take lives.
“Needs must…”, a soft laugh to myself
…
Ball up my bloody gloves into a thick woollen purse
No blood-fleck speckles my black coat
My naked hands stand out too white
In this gloomy dead end
…
I hope he’s found soon, before rigor sets in
I sketch him a salute: I’ll be seeing you soon
At the autopsy in my morgue, where
More bright tempered grabbers, tearers and saws await
Lined up on white linen next to the tray
That drains dark ruined blood and bone-bits away
…
My boot sweeps his encrusted ear to the gutter
(Perhaps a needless cut)
But I can’t find the nose-tip
A tasty morsel for a prowling hound
…
I retrace my steps back uphill to my home.
I always sleep soundly after culling them.
Murdering men. Someone must do it,
The killing I mean, if not I then whom?
…
I slide between the cool starchy sheets
See my wife in the half light asleep on her pillow
Close my eyes, sleep the restful sleep of the sinister
…
I dream of Persephone
Her return from summer to my place underground,
Pay her fare to the ferryman
Sit amongst the dead voyagers
Cross over the Styx then alight
Stroke Cerberus’s three heads and enter the Gate.
I’ll be there waiting to embrace her
When winter comes