FRIDAY NIGHT MONSTERS

It began with the slow, ominous thunder

of funeral bells, the creeping groan
of a creaking door, then the hushed,
whispering voice of a woman intoning,
     “In the dead of night,
      When the moon is high
      And the ill winds blow
      And the banshees cry
      And the moonlight casts
     An unearthly glow,
     Arise my love with tales of woe.”
The camera would cut to a coffin,
its lid rising slowly to reveal
an ashen faced ghoul with dark, shrunken cheeks
dressed in black, gloves and hooded cape
who introduced himself as Sammy Terry
with a deep, diabolical laugh
and would bid us welcome

to Nightmare Theater

just as at the end of the night he would

wish us “Pleasant nightmares,” before

sending us off to bed with the same

sinister laughter.

 
It was the Friday Night Monster Movie Bash

and no youngster growing up in central Indiana

during the sixties or seventies could fail

to recollect WTTV’s resident horror host

and his sidekick, George the rubber spider who spoke

in a high pitched chitter that only Sammy could understand.

So camp and obviously fake

yet it never failed to frighten us.

The movies were of secondary interest;

bad 1950’s B-films of bikini clad babes

being pursued by atom age monsters from the sea,

giant insects, robots from outer space

and bug eyed behemoths from the deeps

sprinkled with an authentic classic

like “Dracula” or “Frankenstein” or one of those

lush gothics from Hammer Studios.

Instead, we watched for Sammy’s dry

gallows humor and comically

convoluted commentary

or that night’s cinematic snack.

 

We always had to beg our parents to stay up late,

promising extra chores and dismissing their concerns

that such ghastly images would give us nightmares

or that we would grow up to be psychopathic killers

or even worse, Democrats,

wearing them down with a child’s insistent persistence.

We’d pan pop our popcorn, slather it in real butter

and salt then leave half of it uneaten

when the movie’s frights became too much

for our eight year old brains,

spend most of the night peering at the screen

through spread fingers and giggling

as we tried to out-scare our siblings.

 

Later, in our bed, all assurances to parents aside,

those horror flick beasts, no matter how cheesy or faked,

would follow us into our dreams to chase us

through the nightmare labyrinth of sleep

but it was Sammy who came to us most often,

rising from some dark grave to pull us

screaming into his dungeon where even George,

that rubber, dime-store Halloween prop

was transformed into a hideous, fanged giant

from the blackest reaches of Hell.

 

 

     

 

DRAMEDY

 

A man so poor he is forced
to sell the part in his hair,
permanently damaging
his once near perfect coiffure,
decides life is meaningless and sad,
tries to kill himself
ala Sylvia Plath
but when he puts his head in the oven
he discovers he is out of gas,
his supply having been
cut off for nonpayment.

His mood darkens

when he is charged with
casting pearls before swine,
it brightens when he inherits
10 million dollars
from an unknown Nigerian uncle.
Tragically, the next day
he is killed
slipping on a banana peel.

THE ADOPTION

A woman enters a room, holding her uterus.

“Look,” she says to her husband, “I’ve removed my uterus.”

“And why would you do that?” asks her puzzled husband.

“It has given us so many lovely children,” she says, “I wanted to examine it more closely. Isn’t it beautiful? The way the fallopian tubes spread out like a butterflies wings.”

She holds it closer to her husband’s face that he might better admire it.

“No, it is not beautiful,” says her husband, “It’s hideous. It belongs inside the body, not outside dripping its fluids all over the linoleum. Go put it back before it goes bad and is of no use to anyone.”

“I was thinking of putting it in a jar and placing it on the mantle for others to admire,” the woman says.

“But, what if I want more children?” the man shrieks, not realizing he is shrieking in an unknown language.

  “We can always adopt,” replies the woman, “in fact, you can adopt my uterus and I can adopt your penis.”

“But I don’t want to give up my penis,” the man thrashes on the floor, white spumes of seminal saliva spurting out his mouth.

“Then my uterus will be very lonely. It has known your penis so well.”

PEARLS AND SWINE

Those Calgon cowboys in their
starched white shirts,
gold plated cufflinks,
eyes focused on the digital
tickertape scroll of the market board,
buy and sell the world
at forty dollars a share.

In steel and glass cathedrals,
the certified public priests of high finance
play pecuniary hymns
on computer keyboards
with their powder soft hands,
chanting aloud in solemn,
Harvard educated voices,
from the Wall Street Journal.

Somewhere in the Mid-west,
a farmer tosses hay from a wagon
with scarred, callused hands,
sweat stiffening his chambray shirt.
By dusk his back will feel
like it’s being squeezed in a vise.
The only stock which concerns him
are the pigs squealing
in his muddy field.

He has turned 200 acres of ground,
readying for Spring planting,
a crop that come harvest
might not be worth enough
to break even, if those
Calgon cowboys and priests
in their holy skyscrapers decide
the price of a bushel isn’t worth
the sweat off a man’s brow.


Published in Blue Collar Review, 2011

BREAKFAST WITH OATMEAL

It is a morning for coffee, eggs and bacon.
But since the doctor has forbidden me
the pleasure of life’s small vices,
I eat my hot oatmeal, grimacing as I wash it down
with bland, watery decaf.
Upstairs I hear my wife’s feet
shuffling towards the bathroom.
I read the morning paper while I finish my oatmeal,
passing over the bad news for the sports page,
then the funnies.
I hear the toilet flush just as I reach
Pearls Before Swine.
My wife stumbles into the kitchen
looking as if she might really be on the hunt
for some tasty brains.
I distract her with oatmeal and decaf.
The oatmeal looks very much
the way my brain feels most days.
As she sleepily spoons the mushed cereal
into her gaping maw,
it suddenly occurs to me
that as much as we’d all love
coffee, eggs and bacon,
most of the time,
we have to settle for oatmeal.

A Comedy of the Absurd

Suppose a man awakens

some anonymous morning

and finds the world has slipped

into one of those off-off Broadway plays

where nothing makes sense

and everyone speaks

in melodramatic non sequiturs.

At first, he is confused

by what he sees,

it is as if the world has been

turned upside down and sideways.

He begins to fear he is losing his mind

and soon they will come

to lock him away.

But as the day goes by

and he becomes acclimated

to the rhythm of this strange,

Kafkaesque universe

he realizes that this is the way

the world has always been

and it is he who has been

out of step all this time.

Published in Poem, November 2009

Tonight's Feature

 

The clouds separate, like the drawing

Of the curtains at a movie theater

And the sky is suddenly flooded

With a cavalcade of stars.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cassiopeia

Lounges seductively upon her chair

Casting come hither glances towards

Steve Reeves’ Hercules who is locked

In mortal combat with the Hydra –

Special effects courtesy of Ray Harryhausen.

Kirk Douglas as Orion the Hunter

Pulls the string of his great bow

And sets fly a flaming arrow

That impales Ursa Major’s rump

Who rises up roaring and with one

Giant paw swipes the Big Dipper

From the sky, spilling a shower

Of shooting stars all across the sky.

A 1950’s science fiction rocket

Blasts past overhead,

Disguised as a satellite or an airplane,

But we know it’s an invasion

And only the teenagers down at the Soda Shop

Led, of course, by Steve McQueen

Can put a stop to their nefarious scheme.

Later, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

Traipse across the blue face of the moon

Then it’s intermission and the night

Is filled with burlesque popcorn boxes

And dancing hot dogs.

Published in California Quarterly, Spring 2010