you know he’s a bad kid from the first scene:
his sister’s on the phone
talking to her boyfriend

he comes in
poems her to death

sinister music
cut forward twenty years

kid’s in the psych ward
with an English professor
still trying to teach
this kid form

roll back to the suburb
Burns Night
sixteenth birthday
of a buxom blonde

she’s walking home
who’s that behind a tree?
she hears someone whisper
something in free verse

cats meow and dogs bark

our buxom blonde’s
going to a sleepover

her best friend bangs
her boyfriend

both die minutes later
an unrhyming stanza
straight through their chests

for some obscure reason
our buxom blonde
heads over to an empty
house on a hill

the door opens to a large room
illuminated in moonlight
the walls are covered in verse
celebrating the moon

she recites them, stands in front
of a mirror

suddenly he’s standing
beside her

a strike of thunder
the room turns black

and sinister music plays out

she’s running
she falls
he’s standing over her
plunging at her
with his pen

she grabs his weak wrist
snaps it in half
kicks him in the balls
and she runs

police are called
choppers and dogs

they capture the poet in a field

guns drawn
couplets called
a shot rings
he falls

his blood mixes with the rain

the girl is alright
shaken up though inside
and can’t bear to read prose
no more

she stays up late at night
writing short, unstructured lines
about murder
kindred spirit
and remorse

Simon Alderwick is a poet and songwriter from the UK. His work is featured or forthcoming in Whatever Keeps The Light On, Re-side and the Squiffy Gnu anthology, among others. Follow him on Twitter @SimonAlderwick.