You walk down a lonely street at night
A coyote howls

No

A wolf howls
A pack of wolves howl
Because wolves are a more perfect stand-in for the occult terror of nighttime
The theme to which this poem is dedicated
All 666 lines of it

The wolf licks her teeth
The wolf licks her green fang
A green fang eclipses the green sun
aka the moon
Which throws in stark relief a mansion bequeathed by some estranged great-aunt
Your estranged great-aunt

More than great
Fantastic

You spend a night inside
Practicing fang shui
Tipping all the portraits over
Face-down towards Hell
Lighting your way from room to room with the severed index finger of E.T.

You feel empathy watching a ghost try to use a water fountain
You feel empathy in suddenly perceiving the contours of ghost-life
Haunt–have things pass through you–repeat
There is a severe lack of lumbar support in the mummy’s sarcophagus
There is a severe lack of upholstery in Dracula’s coffin
All the monsters have lower back pain
And other kinds of pain
An admixture of the two being, we now know, the source of their monstrosity

It’s the year 2012
The world is taken off-air
The world is cancelled
We receive our predestined kiss-of-death from the Apocalips
Life hereafter being, for the most part, an eternal bummer

Forever is a mighty long time

The salvia will never leave your system
Errant, marauding dollar bills will chase you across the burning landscape
In the dreams you have between endless days of toil
All you want is sustenance
All you want is nuclear steaks for your nuclear family
And, like, some freedom
But not so much as to upset or threaten the existing power structures
Really!
All you want is a place to lay your head
And a roof over your head
Generally, your wants are few, and mostly related to the well-being of your head

Tune in next week to find out how your dog dies

But listen, love is a real thing
Even though this world is shit
Just ask Casper
Somewhere in the vacant ribcages of skeletons a heart beats
Just 4 u

PETER GENDRON is a queer, nonbinary Montreal-based artist and writer, white settler, sometimes-radio personality, and total softie. As both an intellectual and a pseudo-intellectual, Gendron tries to create a space in poetry that would be familiar and welcoming to ardent intellectuals and people who fall into the cartoon-viewing demographic. He’s twentey-seven years young, bookish, and loves you thiiiiiiiiis much. If you like cute nerds and/or the piece of writing this bio accompanies, please write!

Copyright © 2018 by Peter Gendron. All rights reserved.