the night house
the dingles of branches paint the night house
while the smoky residue formed in the hate of its past
changes the shades of shadow
from black to red
as if Dante himself had tattooed
the limbs of humanity, those who came here to conquer
or as urban myth relates
those black women who once upon a time
had their babies in this yard
before the bulldozers mowed down the birthing plain
and erected the doomed foundations of the night house
unable to stop
the curses falling
the lips of primal vengeance
camouflaged in an eternal apron of midnight’s plague
and just what is left, after night has devoured it?
it is not the smell of Sunday roast that lingers in the air
but other flesh that emanates from
and the crows that cackle in its unkept grounds
they too have witnessed the decreptitude
and shallowness of love
as the trail leading to the front door
is the sinewy line between life
and burdening tales of death
the inhabitants left wondering
why nothing has gone right here
and just how do the walls manage to stay upright?
old dishes under the verandah
where man once tended beast
wind rattles an abandoned dog chain
now a bloodless umbilical to the dreams
of children who play nearby
while the demons clear the longevity of this place
and all the other night houses
built in the aftermath of heartless atrocities;
the demonic icons of irreversible history,
the sepia images of memory
in a landscape formed
along the blackened fringes