A Stalker Meets His Fate

 The first part is the original that we are supposed to use for inspiration

                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Company
by Josh Wallaert


They are serious, these poets.

They send copies of my favorite books
which were obviously dropped in bathtubs.

They send photographs of small dogs, and birds,
the foil wrappers of European chocolates,
packets of artificial sugar.

They circle the surgeon general’s warnings.

I get blank postcards twice a week,
in strange sizes, with additional postage—

These poets they spare no expense—

hand-stamped in obscure towns like Indian Neck,
Connecticut, and Cut and Shoot, Texas,
and postcards covered in red ink, and letters
written in pencil and erased.

I have informed the authorities.
I have taken the hands of authorities in my own.

I have run their hands across these pages, tracing
erotic drawings, Sinatra lyrics, lines from the Cantos.
I have explained to them the threat.

The authorities will do nothing.

They are poets, or relatives of poets,
or they are paid by poets in contributor’s copies.

These poets they own everything.
They have the latest surveillance equipment.

They send me what they’ve severed, pressed
flowers, asters, fresh newspaper clippings
of industrial accidents.

They send the fingers of fat men wrapped
in wax paper, they send thumbs only,
they send knuckles.

I make my girlfriend open the packages.
I refuse to answer the telephone.

I send her out for Chinese food when we need to eat.

                                         
                           

They like to think of themselves

as artists-as writers-as poets;

they live in dark caverns of psychotic minds

and with sharp scissoers they cut,

paper dolls from pages ripped out of soiled magazines,

stained by sweaty palms and perverted delusions.

they hide in the obscurity of burned out streetlights

and snap pictures of me to superimpose my face

on those lifeless paperdolls [naked bodies of glamour whores]

tied in ribbons of pink satin and wrapped in old grocery bags;

filling my mailbox until it spills over;

they are artists-writers-poets

of a different sort

wanna-bes and never-weres;

yet they pretend, and they intimidate,

without ever really crossing the lines of the law;

rendering helpless the system that is supposed to protect

and so the system is handcuffed and shackled;

"for what they do is not against the law"

packages addressed to me [un-imaginable contents]

I am rendered paralized-they succeed,

but only if I let them-for they are the cowards of this world

the dregs of society;

and I have to believe that justice will be served;

I know it will-as I look at the picture on my wall,

the one with an empty coffin-and their name

scribbled in lipstick of the brightest red

[a small mistake they will make-a simple traffic violation]

and resisting arrest will land them in jail,

the first step to their demise;

and I smile at my own secret, and reach into the dark of my closet,

[I stick another pin into my doll-not made out of paper]

a spell-and a prayer sent to the Gods - compliments of my Cuban friend;

and no, this does not involve chicken or rabbit blood,

[a simple wish for protection and freedom from fear]

Revenge can be so sweet-when I dance upon his grave.

and I will, and I'll throw cut out paperdolls into the casket;