Poem 112

More fate and bad luck (see Poem 110) … written in my last year at Waikato University and another one (self) published in the student newspaper …
… I like the rhythm and rhyme, and the way things move inexorably closer to the narrator …

( when I laid this out for Nexus I added a graphic, a James Thurber cartoon of a man lurching up in bed in fright – I can’t think of the poem without that image now … )

Night Of The Long Odds

The killer will not enter my house tonight
the chance is too slim for thought
my door is barred with probability
and the lessons my teachers taught

for the killer is one in a million
and his victim is number two
somewhere tonight they will meet
while I sleep they rendezvous

but the killer will not enter my house tonight
the odds deny him his way
he will keep his date in another place
and allow me the grace of a day

for the killer is one in a million
and his victim is number two
though I lie here sleepless staring
there is nothing more to do

yes the odds are as slim as a blade
that slips between window and sill
as the victim lays out the pact
that the killer must fulfil

and the killer is one in a million
his victim just number two
my house is broken and hollow
and the night comes seeping through

I hear him in my house
and I hear him at my back
I see the door is opening
and there is darkness through the crack

though he is one in a million
I am number two
and a small voice says tonight
tonight the victim is you