KILLING ROSE

“No money can heal

a mind diseased.

This is Hell not are

We out of it”

—Graham Greene

Brighton Rock

It wasn’t just Prewitt —

Comfortless, shaken,

The old bitch in the basement

It was HIS enemy now—

Rose in his room, his bed

A doubled-darkness now

Worse came to worse —

Rose’s certainty that

Love would heal hate

She was domesticating —

Their black alliance into

Something that wasn’t

“I’m so happy,” she said —

“It really can’t be so bad

after all, maybe a baby?”

Pinkie glanced at the bed —

With furious disgust at

What they’d done there

“Not bad?” he said —

“It’s a mortal sin” with

Its lesson thrusting home

_____________

GOONIGHT, GOONIGHT

“appalled by

her ugliness”

—Graham Greene

Brighton Rock

Rose listened with a —

Vicarious agony saying

“A baby might be coming”

Her words lodged —

In his brain “might be”

He’d never thought that!

Pinkie looked at her —

With terror and disgust!

An ugly birth in his bed!?!

A nail in his coffin —

Another life pinning him down

Years of agony ahead

His freedom never lasting —

Doomed like Prewitt with his

Own bitch in the basement

An odd nostalgia —

For the darkest act of all

Began flooding him

Like the tide down there —

Under the pier, greenish

Rotten-smelling, putrid

It was then he decided —

Worse had come to worse

It was time to kill her

________________

CRIMINAL HISTORY

“This were a fine reign

to do ill and not hear

of it again”—The Witch

of Edmonton

If Pinkie could succeed—

In killing Rose, his crime

Would have been “perfect”

Perfect as killing Hale—

Escaping detection, perfect

As Kite killed at the station

He’d sever her legs—

With a nice sharp razor

“Such tits!” would be next

The severed legs would be—

Found in a suitcase at some

Railway station cloakroom

Rose’s dismembered body—

Found later in a trunk at

Charing Cross Station

Her tits discovered—

In a Paddington trunk

A grisly little surprise

Wrapped in brown paper—

Tied with a Venetian-blind

Found tighter than tight

A perfect crime—

Just like Hale’s murder

Nobody tried and convicted

The horrible thing was—

The girl was pregnant with

Pinkie’s son inside her