How I’ve missed the poet who died

and became a banker.

She’d been buried in rags and risen

in heels.

Silver dollars eat the dead beat.

The sweet meat of a black queen.

How I’ve missed Samson,

the man from the mountains, cuffed to the column,

who cut his hair and lost his job.

Now bury your black comb deep in your back pocket.

How I’ve missed the ghost of the junkie,

who forgot her freckles in my hand

and left her red hair behind for me to find.

How we’ve summoned old spirits in the basement,

filling the hall.

Seance on the ground floor.

Crystal ball in your nose. Pin prick in your Voodoo doll.

How I’ve missed the fiend, fat Polack

who followed me into bathrooms

and poured my piss into bottles.

How he’s lived off my trash.

How I’ve missed the jet-ski death queen

and the sprouts of hair that shoot from her head.

She swears of nightmares and hears

dead mens’ voices in her ears

creaking like floorboards, croaking like toads.

Old bones that bang against her eardrum. Dumb noise.

Eyes that fall deep into cracks in a skull.

Red slash. Pink rip. Open open mind. Out out little light.

You shouldn’t leave your throat so open,

things are gathering and building nests.

Bees buzzing. Flies flying. How the old croc snaps down

shut.

The animal-wrangler lays his eggs

in you where he can.