Jenny Greenteeth

Her hair was green, the water cold.
And I was but fifteen years old.
A-walking fast from Granger’s Inn
A preacher’s son awash in sin
For drunk was I, and randy too
And I had hopes of finding you
Asleep at home, you sweet young thing,
So I could do a wretched thing.
I loved you but in sin’s embrace
I wasn’t thinking of your face.
Twas sex I wanted pure and true.
A mannish need. I needed you.
I wanted lips and nails and teeth
I wanted to feel you beneath
For carnal knowledge I did yearn
And there was but one way to learn
My aim was for your bedroom door
I would have made you my young whore
I strolled quite near the water’s edge
By Jackie’s farm near Miller’s hedge
A violent splashing caused me fright.
A hand shot out and held me tight.
It held my ankle on the shore
It froze me to the very core
They called her Jenny Greenteeth then
A fairy drowning fair young men
Her algae-ridden patchy hair
(The patches of her hair still there)
Clung wetly to her long wet limbs
And tangled like a monarch’s whims.
Her skin was green from algae’s kiss
And always I’ll remember this:
Her eyes were dots of light from hell.
Reflected glints from satan’s well.
She pulled again and I fell back
And on the shore I left a track
As I was dragged into the lake
My very life itself at stake
The water soaked my trouserlegs
Her eyes looked up like boiled eggs
Her skullish rictus grinning smile
Was greedy, dead, and full of guile
For I’d been tricked and led astray
By lust and sin and drink that day
And Jenny Greenteeth had me then
Her stash of horny wanton men
Who walked too close and were pulled in
Lay bloated and with spongy skin
By Jenny’s house deep in the lake
She had a thirst she could not slake
You may have heard a thing or two
About men’s pricks and what they do
They harden, you have heard it said,
Not only in the marriage bed
But sometimes on the deathbed too
Tumescent, ready, cold and blue
On gallows, swords and guillotines
A man will try by any means
Beyond his death to spread his seed
And even as his body’s need
For breathing ends and bleeding stops
And from the chopping block he flops
A flagpole will attend his death
A testament to his last breath.
Now Jenny Greenteeth waits at night
For men with plans of dark delight
And blood enough for but one head
She drags them down and drowns them dead.
And there in inky wetness ruts
The cock of each new husband juts
Up into Jenny’s moldy snatch
Each lover labeled ‘quite a catch’.
She screams and comes and rides and rides
The deadwood of the widowed brides
And women left without their men.
She humps until they break and then
She eats their eyes and ravaged cocks
And weights their bodies to the rocks.
These men are never seen again.
That is, if you could call them men.
For drunken minds intent on rapes.
Belong to cowards, worse than apes.
So Jenny takes them to the mire.
And gives them what they so desire.
The water closed upon my neck.
Remember me? The drunken wreck?
I sobered up that night real quick.
The water shriveled up my dick.
My thoughts of avarice had fled.
The blood rushed to my upper head.
I thrashed towards the dusky shore.
I kicked and screamed (and even swore).
I prayed and cried and yelled out “no!”
And she lost interest. Let me go.
My hands hit sand. I saw the trees.
I crawled with speed on bloody knees.
I crawled away from Jenny’s lake.
I crawled away from my mistake.
I puked my dinner and my gin.
I crawled right back to Granger’s Inn.
My story to them I did tell.
Trussed up in blankets, scared as hell.
Her handprint’s still burned on my shin.
Reminding me of all my sin.

Now I’m a preacher, here to say,
That Jenny let me go that day
So I could tell the moral true:
(And it might just pertain to you.)
If woman’s virtue you would take.
Remember Jenny in the lake.





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Leaping

Okay, I admit it.

I pull off my pajamas in the middle of the night sometimes.

An ex-girlfriend once offered forth the theory that I was more in touch with my inner caveman when I was asleep. This inner caveman thought that ‘clothes’ were alien and would shuck them off with primitive grunts and dog-like whines at four in the morning.

I’ve woken up naked more than once.

Usually it’s in my own apartment if not my own bed. Never in a metal chair, never handcuffed to a metal table, never cold, and definitely not crying under bright lights.

It’s a strange experience to wake up crying.

Although looking at the blood-spattered apparition in the one-way mirror across the table from what I guess is a police interrogation chamber, I’m not surprised the tears are gushing.

I’m a peaceful dude. I’m soft around the edges. I can’t understand why my reflection is looking back through blood-soaked hair that is (and I notice this with a shock that scares me more than anything else so far) longer than I remember.

I’m naked. The chair I’m sitting on is cold. I can see my breath.

The muscles in my face ache like I’ve been crying for hours.

“H-hello?” I whimper in the echoing room. I turn my head around and that’s when I realize that there are no video cameras in the room. At all. None that I can see.

This worries me more than the change in hair length. The absence of cameras or microphones on the table raises the disturbing possibility that this is not a police questioning room.

What am I doing here?

Why is there a body across the room?

Why is there a blood-covered pen in my white-knuckled fist?

I’m putting two and two together here and coming up with panic.

The door bangs to the room bangs open and two men dressed in black riot gear rush in. I can see a person in a lab coat behind them that I recognize.

And then-

-I’m eating a donut in a diner in Houston. I pause with the donut halfway to my lips. I’m sitting in a booth with a beautiful woman across the table from me. Her brow creases.

“You okay, babe?” she asks and cocks her head playfully to the side. She touches my fingers that are resting on the coffee cup between us. There’s a wedding band on her finger.

My eyes flick down to the matching wedding band on the finger of my donut hand.

I close my mouth with a click and nod to her.

“Oh yeah sure. Just tired. That donut was good.” I say to her and excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

What I see in the bathroom mirror shocks me even more than last time.

I’m at least ten years older than I was in the interrogation room.



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Canadian Film Festival Posters

A couple of brilliant poster ideas here for a just-passed Canadian Filmmaker's Festival in Toronto.








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