Ken Farrell
I think I am
being stalked by the man
I could be.
Late at night, he murmurs
through my window
his plan for the coming day.
He is my severed shadow
freed of the soul-binding sinew
his greatest pleasure
taking the measure of me
and before dawn
he slips my shoes on
prances through my home
a happy genius pirouetting
over the spotty rug.
I wake and struggle
against the lesser in me
but lie dumb, a tangle
of nerves, grave-sewn
though I live, as he
loves my wife more lovingly.
Is he the phantom,
or is it me? Am I
who he labors to master,
zombie to his bokor?
No, I am not
the newly raised undead
soon to be enslaved
but the un-needed, the never born.
I am just the unripe twin
bulging in his skull
blob of plasma web of dead-end
nerves scattering
of teeth a teary twitchy
albino eye I am merely a cyst
he longs to excise
to ease the throb
to put me down
once
and for all
***
Ken Farrell’s work is forthcoming/published in journals such as Sport Literate, The Piltdown Review, The Offbeat (poetry prize winner, selected by Heid E. Erdrich), Pilgrimage, The Texas Poetry Journal, Writer’s Bloc, Connections, and anthologized with Arachne Press. Ken Holds an MFA from Texas State University and an MA from Salisbury University, has earned bread as an adjunct, server, professional cage fighter, and pizzaiolo, and for most of the past ten years, Ken has worked in a warehouse. He is currently busy with family and revising and shopping poetry and short fiction manuscripts, and in response to a challenge from his daughter who participated in NaNoWriMo, Ken recently began his first novel.