NUMBER 1073
by John Grey
The house is old and infected
with churlish darkness,
the eyes of the grave,
the dusty smell of malevolence.
In even the emptiest of rooms,
a presence pricks the skin like needles.
And, when it’s gray and damp outside,
old despair seeps tears from every ceiling.
So many have dwelt within these walls,
the cruel, the evil, the unrepentant,
a diabolical den of debauched lives
without the prospect of heaven.
Even sleep is morbid restlessness,
a wearying collision of dream and haunting.
The moans from within, without,
keep all four posters of the bed awake.
John
Grey is
an Australian poet, U.S. resident, recently published in New World Writing,
North Dakota Quarterly, and Tenth Muse. Latest books, Between Two Fires,
Covert, and Memory Outside the Head, are available through Amazon. Work
upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa,
and Shot Glass Journal.