|
|
|
|
|
|
michael ceraolo is a forty-something civil servant in mentor, ohio, struggling to overcome a middle class upbringing.
Danger in the stairway is right out in the open, not lurking and not from the proverbial hoodlum The exposed wires wait to strangle the unwary The nails protruding from the floor wait to stab the unsuspecting and the unsharp-eyed The housing inspectors are another of those urban legends And whatever code is being observed here is surely not the building code. A giant mountain of salt sits unused outside the salt mines, the result of the failure of capitalism to produce a severe enough winter, while across the street is one of the educational salt mines names, in a paroxysm of parochial pride over politics, for a Socialist, albeit a safely dead one. I see a silver flash in the moonlight Time and I both obey the command to Freeze Blood stained consiousness spills out of me and pools on the sidewalk, the result of the crush of cold steel against my skull As I sit poised between here and hereafter I hear Death's cackle slowly getting fainter until it disappears entirely I feel warm red life running down my neck, realizing the angel of violence this time has spared me |
