19/365 - The Bat Versus The Joker

He’d never seen the light of day
His lips were ruby red
Emerald-tinted was the hair
That sprouted from his head

His tailored suit was indigo
Though rarely was it cleaned
And from the milk of cruelty
He had yet to be weaned

For every drop of blood that fell
Upon his velvet vest
Was a drop (he always felt)
That darkly dropped in jest

Because to him life’s tapestry
Was just a gruesome gaffe
And in the face of tragedy
He always chose to laugh

His peals were haunted, scary things
That roosted in the ear
Manic chuckles sewn from death
That caused the city fear

This nightmare of a man was thought
To be the very Ripper.
A string of women had been found
All undone like a zipper

And grins were cut into their cheeks
To make their smiles wider
Their ghastly laughing countenance
Attractive as a spider

After that, he’d hit the body.
Strangle, beat and choke her.
Detectives called him Ripper Jack
He called himself The Joker.

Detective Wayne from Scotland Yard
Came down to catch the slayer
“If the Joker likes a game,”
he said, “Then I’m a player.”

Detective Wayne had giant ears
The sharpest in Great Britain
Ears more sensitive, they said
Than whiskers on a kitten

He brought an apparatus, too
An amplifying hat
A cowl with extended ears
They nicknamed him ‘The Bat’

Late at night he walked the streets
Listening for the crime
Waiting for the laughter’s owner
Listening all the time

Then one night he heard the laughter
Just a tiny snicker
A laugh so soft and yet so dark
A horse’s deathly whicker

Wayne turned ‘round and there he stood
The Joker pale of skin
With a knife and crazy eyes
Skeletally thin

The Joker laughed and lunged en garde
The Bat fanned up his cloak
The blade found nothing but the cape
And then a cloud of smoke

Joker laughed and couldn’t see him
But The Bat could hear still
He struck out into the laugh
Using both his ears ‘til

All the laughter stopped abruptly
And the smoke a-drifted
The Bat stared down at what he’d hit
As the smoke all lifted

All The Bat had in his hands
A tattered purple jacket
The Joker must have slipped away
In amongst the racket







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20/365 - The Long Division

All the tallest soldiers were put into one battalion. The theory was that if they went in first, they’d scare the enemy. If they didn’t scare the enemy, they’d be bigger targets. They were called The Long Division.

None of their uniforms fit. The doorframes of their barracks all had dents in the center of the top. Any hanging lights were raised. At night, their feet hung over the edges of their beds.

Their favourite thing to do was to go to movie theaters while they were on leave and sit in the front row. After that, they’d go to a local bar and pretend to be a basketball team.

They ranged in girth from stick-insect to giant, pool cue to tree trunk. Before joining the army, most of them had started developing hunches from stooping indoors and talking to the tiny. Those hunches were disappearing. No longer afraid to stand up straight, they strode with confidence now. Freaks united and given a chance to feel normal.

They called themselves The Forest.





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21/365 - Ramblings

The evil keening of an even keel pulling me through the nineteen Hades. She found me amongst the flames. She was wearing a second-hand parka with a patch on the arm from the Canada Goose Arctic Program. I was a repeat offender who was repeatedly offensive. She was alternatively current. I was as soft and hairy as a muppet’s cheekbone. She was as hard as an Englishman’s dentures. “Become anger until anger becomes you” was my motto. “Let the butterflies in your stomach come out through your language” was hers.


I was a juvenile relinquent. She was Titan’s moon.


I was a lumberjack ninja. She was a shimmying car alarm.


Together, we put our bad pasts into jigsaw boxes and carved wooden statues into the shapes of prime ministers. We used teacups to carry bathtub gin to AA meetings in cities we couldn’t pronounce the names of. We had parties but invited no guests. We watched the oldest movies we could find on brand new televisions. We hitchhiked for airplanes.


Bubble-bath memories and calendar children vie for the attention of creek-bed billboards. All the while we watched the guttering fuse of our relationship inch towards the dynamite we’d stacked up against the door. You liked the attic and I liked the basement. Together, we lived on the main floor of the fireworks store.


The mountain range of the future called out to us like Mickey Rooney’s sex drive called out to starlets. I’ll meet her after the end of the world and we’ll laugh so hard the angels will shake their heads and blush.




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