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Christopher Hivner

The December Editor's Pick Poet is Christopher Hivner

Please feel free to email Christopher at:

hailragnar@verison.net

CHRISTOPHER

MY FRIENDS ARRIVE AT MIDNIGHT

The midnight movie characters
talk to me,
telling me stories
no one else knows.
Vampires are chatty,
werewolves not so much,
and serial killers
love the sound of their own voices,
shut up already
about how clever you are,
the police will never catch you,
blah, blah, blah.
Zombies try to tell jokes
but the punchline
is always ‘brains’.
Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs
tell filthy stories
that will make anyone blanch,
his sea monsters though
have no sense of humor.
Leatherface is surprisingly sophisticated
for a man
who wears someone else’s skin,
but don’t ever invite
Jason and Michael Myers
to the same party
or you’ll end up with
two dozen stabbing victims,
they are so competitive.
The Japanese monsters
are some of my favorites.
So many nights spent
with Godzilla and Mothra
drinking too much saki
and doing impressions
of American accents
dubbing the original dialog.
It’s 11:55,
I have to get ready.
Mechagodzilla, the mummy, Chuckie
and Tim Thomerson
are coming over to play cards.

THE SONG OF THE BELLS

The bells pealed
low in the distance,
composing a hypnotic song,
pushing clouds
past the moon,
the ethereal glow
leading me closer
to the rising toll
of the bells.
They rang with insistence
intruding on my breathing,
setting my heart beat
to the march
of a parading army.
Then the tone changed,
sounding like a gong
breaking the sky
with sonorous clashes,
dropping me to my knees,
hands covering my ears
to hold my melting brain in,
sanity looking for
any escape route
until the last clang,
a desperate, deep boom
that brought my house
down around me,
a thunderstorm of
brick and mortar
with hails of glass
and fire pelting from
the abraded sky.

In the morning
there was silence,
but in our madness
all we could hear
were the ringing bells.

HERE I COME

I will count to 10
and then
here I come,
eenie meenie
minie mo,
if I find you
I won’t let you go,
take a tiger
by the toe
and let him shred you so,
if he screams
let him go,
five hundred pounds of muscled beast
to lay you low,
eenie meenie
mienie mo
you have nowhere to go
9 . . . 10
here I come.

Christopher Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by books and the echoes of music. He has recently been published in Jitter, Siren’s Call and Focus. A collection of short stories, “The Spaces between Your Screams” was published by eTreasures Publishing.

website: www.chrishivner.com, Facebook: Christopher Hivner - Author, Twitter: @Your_screams.