Case Study
poem
You break into my room in my slumber;
perhaps it’s really you, somehow,
and I know not who else,
I can’t see that well,
your words are an exasperating buzz
from a short-circuited TV set,
and a woman taps my shoulder,
and, with a distressing accent, announces:
You messed her up real bad.
I feel a bit uneasy, so I rehearse my escape.
I look around the darkened auburn room,
my weary eyes going berserk,
then I freeze: shit, what?
Your newborn in a plastic bag
hanging from the door handle,
sunnily waving bye-bye.
Is it ageless?
It’s real.
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Nonplussed, I take flight,
feeling seasick or something,
my mind spinning in angst,
and I’m naked,
trying to make haste
down my street that isn’t my street at all,
struggling to get into my pajamas
in rapid motion.
I trip on some grit,
I halt for respite,
you hop onto my mind
as per customary inclination,
and I brusquely realise —
overcome by sheer longing —
I must go back,
but every fucking one
and every fucking thing
seems to abhor my
outright sheer manifestation.
What’s this place again?
I turn back. Wacked.
Where in this hell are you,
now that I plead to retrieve you
among all these other aliens?
© Henry Martin 2023
