Poetry: All forms & styles|Featured Series: Prose Poetry|2020 theme: "A Lover's Complaint"|Gene Twaronite|"Be Safe"

Gene Twaronite

Be Safe

out there, she said, as if there’s no danger beyond the skin and bones of my humble abode when just the other day I was minding my own business walking my dog on Facebook and a troll in a truck nearly ran us over in the crosswalk and as he drove away called out, Die, you Jewish dog, though I happen to know my dog is Baptist, and now he refuses to talk to me—god, how I miss our fireside chats. And once, while walking at the mall I heard a voice inside my head that sounded a lot like the voice God might use if she looked like a model from Victoria’s Secret with a sexy accent whispering in my ear to empty the contents of my bank account and send it immediately to God’s PayPal address or my soul is toast. So many things can walk right in and infest your castle—it’s a regular boulevard—like the time I came across a cute dirty word I had never heard before that, as soon as I said it, wormed into my brain before I could stop it, making me repeat it over and over, which might be why people run when they see me. I shudder to think of all the bugs that got in when I wasn’t looking, random impressions from the gutters and back alleys where I roam, crawling out at night like cockroaches, to harry my dreams and retreat to their dark corners at dawn. And I know that somewhere out there is a kittenish meme with my name on it, just waiting at the front door to be let in to mutate, replicate and take over my head like a monster. So be safe in there from thoughts gone rogue and voices not your own.

About the writer:
Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet and the author of ten books, including collections of poetry, short stories and essays as well as two juvenile fantasy novels. His latest poetry collections are The Museum of Unwearable Shoes (Kelsay Books) and the forthcoming What the Gargoyle Sees, to be published in March 2021.

Image: Mystery of Metempsychosis in the Last Years of Man by Winslow Wilson (1892-1974). No medium specified. No size specified. By 2017. By free license.