With all the holes I dig I remember digging yours
I remember keeping my face straight
And when you dropped in that hole I dug for you
The one thing I forgot  was you
I remember being mad at you for leaving
But never remember what filled my heart


I hope that one day I won’t have to dig a hole
And that I will be lowered next to you
I hope I can remember what about you made me happy


But I will not be lowered next to you
He will be there
He was yours and you were his


But I should be next to you
I knew you better
You may not know it but I was there for you
I gave you the notes
Not him


You didn’t know me
But I knew you


I Love You More,

A spider crawls under my toes in lust,
intoxicated by the warmth of my veins.
Do not waste a drop, I cried,
guiding it to drain me out of blood.

Today is my day.
A test to impress the Master.
To prove my dark is worthy,
skilled enough to be a successor.

The dead settled in me; one by one.
They hunted for life in every corner,
raided the deepest pit.
My black was satisfying.
They dressed me in the cloak of death.
I laughed at my desperate attempt to be the new Master.

The final round,
A fight with the Master himself.

He strikes a hole through me,
the void was known yet distant.
I want the throne,
I slash him in two by the cut of my heart.

My fangs grew overnight
And when I tried to hide my smile
It poked my lower lip
From it, a bit of blood dripped,
It tasted sweet.

I walked over arched bridges at night
The ones, that mold around the moon light,
My fangs were longing for a match
To graze your lips, your mouth to touch.
On you, to latch.

The knock woke me from my deep sleep,
I heard some kids say trick or treat,
I realized it's Halloween!
I gathered candy from under my couch
I didn't need my plastic fangs
I had my own and the costume matched.

I am huddled in the coroner,
a little beast within a man,
And when at night he studies bodies,
I come out,
now and again.

the skull and spine of seventy seven men, extracted.
retribution far past putrefaction.
a pile of bones in the center of town, at the corner of washington
& rochambeau.
gather around.

           do you believe in the boogeyman?

a glitch in the darkness.
an echo of rage, high chroma bacteriophage.
every faithless father,
every sister spared,
every ritual sung just right, a brief blackout,
reconfigured pixels of outer night.

                     [bobby’s sega genesis awakens on its own]

thirty three years to the day, he
died on that suncrest boulevard, returned today just to say “hey.”

graveyard family tree and the moon.
first as a manifestation of electromagnetic phenomena
            in a videogame’s cpu. 1993.
second as a fully-fledged entity materialized via videocassette,
            hungry for pizza and pure vengeance. 2001.
third from beneath bedrock, the quarry belly baste,
            a body buried thrice, undead toxic tumescence,    
            a walking corpse heaving black plasma. 2020.

the sequel.
the son.
the spectral chosen one, he
rips out a throat or two, quite fashionably so,
a man about town throttled and disemboweled,
as friends and neighbors stumble and sprint to escape with their own godforsaken skin.
let the bone collection begin.
emerged in afterschool hallways to **** old classmates turned teachers.
emerged in afterhours offices to devour old buddies turned bankers.
emerged in the quiet dark homes of neighborhood flesh and folk.
blood soaked socks.

why? you ask, must all these people die?
vengeance?    no.
that was a lie.
he killed those people for a laugh
& that’s that.

dad is in the garage.
days into spark-light and piles of polyethylene
etched.
soon, he says.
as grandaddy laughs,
rattling the icebox for more beer.

dad’s homemade android:
  the thing.
like a doll polished
& grinning, it
dances for us in the kitchen.

the dog barks, chained in the backyard.

the thing,
do-si-dos for a laugh, catches a glimpse
of the trees beyond the yard,
overheats,
circuits popping into a limp heap of pieces.
  dead.
left to mold-over in the garage.

the days.
the rain.
the cats tiptoeing along the edge of fences
across the street.
the dog barking, chained, &
snapped.
  dead
beneath a truck.

dad is in hysterics.
dad is in the garage,
weeks in and his soaked red knuckles.
mom is drinking with grandaddy.
they rattle the icebox.
  the dog.

the dog dances for us in the kitchen,
reboots and sits.
it digs a pit all night and buries three cats there.
it sleeps on the mound.
it never barks.
it waits there in the backyard, still
& staring into the trees.
  the trees.