The Hole In My Head
by Gary William Crawford
The summer rain leaks into my brain
through a hole made long ago by a mad surgeon.
They said he was a warlock,
and his associates were ghosts and vampires.
Somehow I came to him in a waking dream.
He told me I was mad, like himself,
and he let in through the hole in my head
a luminous liquid from the stars
and the living words of a rite older than time.
How can I free myself from this evil rain?
My God, my house has holes in the roof,
and vampire bats crawl out of them into the night.
In a moment, my body will evaporate,
and I will be both haunter and haunted.
© 2004 Gary William Crawford
Gary Crawford is the author of two books of poetry, Poems
of the Divided Self and In Shadow Lands,
and the short story collection Gothic Fevers. I
have published works of literary scholarship and criticism, such as Ramsey
Campbell, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography, and Robert
Aickman: An Introduction. He is also the founder and editor
of Gothic Press (http://www.gothicpress.com/.)
Find more by Gary William Crawford in the Author Index.
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