Howl That Dares To Be Different

A howl is like a room – this one large, near empty

and bellowing out in echo – with just the furniture

of its nightmare and scream: the red curtains hung

to a choke, one bed beneath which the darkness is so

deep you have to reach in and find that compulsion,

white utilities to splash on continuing patterns,

doors opening so slow in their groans that time

turns waiting into one long and last heartbeat. Then

the howl. Out of that death comes the cry so loud

it is a hotel of emptied rooms wherein reverberations

will bring the evil of its edifice to the hard ground.

Because in any room there should be the lifeblood of

things like ornaments and mementos, walls to ceiling

packed with things to fully absorb and kill that sound.


Perhaps breaking whatever mystique there might be, this is a 'found' Halloween poem prompted by my misreading last night of a digital advertising board at the televised Real Madrid vs Sevilla game. What I initially read as Howls that dare to be different was actually Hotels that dare to be different. There you go. Error creates.