Mother wake up there’s something beneath my bed and from its mouth comes the sound of grinding bones and fetid breath

its teeth have been cut on the soft, supple flesh of innocence and youth…




and I hear it whispering in my ear.

“Come little one, suffer my company and oh, things I will show you- the body is a temple and I will instruct you in the ways of worshiping at my altar”

A mentor to a lost child,
A compass for a ship at sea with the power to reverse the poles and render all maps useless


“Take my hand and tread where the many have gone before you.
Take your place among them as another notch in my belt.”

Mother wake up, on its breath I smell the rot of devoured child hoods
This leviathan and bringer of ruin comes for me now.
All hidden beneath a uniform:

a coach’s whistle,
a priests collar,
a teacher’s ruler,

Truly a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The bogeyman is real.