A criminal moves in next door

Spooked


We had thought
The pulled shades were lidded eyes;
The face of the house, weary walls,
Beleaguered by a fearful light.


We thought that they shied
From eyes that jangled
At the clash of his carbon skin
With her pale parchment,
And the chocolate child.


But strange it was
When he insinuated his gun
As if it were a bigger organ
Than the one that spit out the child—
A steel rod with lead sperm
That suck life rather than be it.


We thought he struggled long hours,
Coming home so the sun’s eye
Blinked open when he closed
The door behind his night.


Then, the police,
Crime parasites,
Swarmed the house.
In their love to hate him,
I learned that unzipped
Morality fed the darkness.
And cops, symbiotic,
Came to claim him as their own.


Not the façade,
But the depths were somber.


5/18/1981

"Spooked" was first published in Monsters in a Half-way House, 1981  The plural personae are watching the strange behavior of the new neighbors. 

At the time, I and my calico cat Butterfly were rooming with Judy Leigh and her border collie in a house near the zoo and Hillsborough River in Tampa.  We all got along well, but one day we noticed that new neighbors had moved in across the street:  a black man, a white woman, and their child. 

Although I said "good morning" and "hello" when I encountered them; they were very stand-offish as if they didn't want to interact with the neighbors.  Judy and I discussed why they would be unfriendly and decided that being a mixed couple made them suspicious of the intentions of others.  Besides, the man seemed to work at night, so he was coming home while Judy and I were leaving for work in the mornings.

Then one day I watched the man come home and intentionally let me see a large pistol that he carried in his belt.  We were happy to ignore them after that display.

A week or so later, a police SWAT team surrounded the house and went in force inside the house and brought out the black man in handcuffs.  He must have been a hard character to warrent such attention.

The wife and child moved out within a week, but we never discovered what the black man's crimes had been.

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