Darkness Walks

Darkness walks on stilts. 
Almost asleep, I tell you to get up,
A robber may be near—you say
we have nothing to steal. 
Our money is birds.  They’ve migrated south. 
Yet the clomp of the stilts gets louder
coming up the stairs.  Perhaps
it’s not a thief after all.  Angels come in
strange ways and don’t need to knock. 
I ask you should we let them in.  No,
you say, you’re tired.  You must get
a Shingles shot tomorrow.

Aunt Stokesia says that it’s bad luck
to refuse an angel. 
It can make them go bad. 
I open the bedroom door, see nothing.
A dyspeptic wind taps at the window. 
I’ve met this wind a few times. 
The first was in grade school.  At seven
I was in love with my second grade teacher,
Helen Howe.  She demoted me
to the yellow reading group.  The wind
lifted her over the school. 
We never saw her again.

Darkness walks on bright
red leaves.  We kiss. 
Our house fills with animated rakes.

Taupe

My life comes to me

                                    In shades of taupe.

I am the snuffle of a dying antelope.
I stuff keepsakes in a wounded envelope.
Kind friends still call me a dope.
I sluff it off.  They live without hope.
Sometimes I think I’m a saggy Pope
making up rules because I can barely cope.

Do you love me, even a bit?  Let’s elope.
When I think you’ll say yes you say nope.
Sad for twenty minutes, I eat Cheerios and mope.
My doctor kisses me with a proctoscope.
My life comes to me

                                    with germy soap.

Kenneth Pobo has a new book out called The Antlantis Hit Parade.  His work appears in, or will appear in, North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam, Review, Mudfish, Nimrod, and elsewhere.