Poem: Monsters

Monsters

By Ghia Vitale
QuailBellMagazine.com

Wouldn't it be great if,
Monsters came blundering out of the woods,
Announcing themselves the crackling hisses of dead leaves carpeting their steps,
And the violent crunching of forsaken limbs strewn about the ground,
More often than they come slithering out of the woodwork,
And out of our closets,
As they clink champagne glasses,
With cobweb-cloaked skeletons on their way out?

Wouldn't it be convenient if,
Monsters' tracks never strayed in the mud's memory,
Or erased from the shore by a conspiratorial breath?
After all, how can one trace their path of destruction that doesn't exist?
Then, all that stands between you and the rest of the world is,
Your words,
Because they do not count as "evidence" to anyone but those who believe them.

But no...

Monsters come crawling out from underneath your bed once they know you're asleep;
You might not think twice about it because,
We invite them in,
So you expect to hear them stirring at night.
Monsters invite us to enjoy stove top jacuzzis,
Perhaps lowering the flames when you complain that your skin is seering away,
Only to gradually heighten the gas moments later until,
Furious beads of air dance across water's surface,
Only to overflow the pot with an orgiastic mass of bubbles,
Like the gutteral murmurs,
That foreshadow the emergence,
Of a creature from a,
Spiritual cesspool.
Bright eyes, bright hopes,
Brilliant charm,
Blind us to their eternal famishment and the fangs,
That inevitably sink into the rotten pits of our stomachs.

Monsters come on like earth quakes;
We go about our lives until their seismic palpitations,
As ever-growing tremors in our marrow,
Until we find the world seizuring beneath us.
They leave us to fend for ourselves in wake of their ruination,
Because that's just the way that they are.
We think back to all of the clouds we never saw (or refused to see),
To all of the 
because it seemed like such a nice day that would never, ever do such a thing.
Still, we should've known better than to not escape.
We kick ourselves because we didn't see, taste, or smell the skid marks in their mouth,
And for all the times that we could've fully captured those subtle glances in candlelight,
Especially after we feasted on their honey tongues.

Monsters don't happen to us like we happen to monsters -
Monsters sleep soundly with blood on their breath,
As though they were right all along,
Because that's just how the world is.
We should plaster the heads of monsters all over wanted posters,
Instead of not "letting" our heads become hunting trophies,
That decorate the walls of their closets.

#Unreal #Poetry #Monsters #Predators #Hunting #Trophy #Weather #Fangs #Manipulation #Lies #Exploitation #Abuse
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