The house was strangely silent, <br />flies crawling, copulating <br />on Federation walls, <br />the ticking of a Timex, gold <br />the kitchen model, broke, <br />though timidly, the death <br />whose odour had by now, <br />and since Thanksgiving Day, <br />expanded from the ancient bed <br />onto the hallway, to descend <br />down carpet stairs that creaked, <br />when living souls had been <br />the occupants; they were no more. <br />As luck would have it, heavy tools <br />were stored down in the cellar, <br />near the laundry sink, whose tap <br />performed its lonely ritual, <br />a dropp a second, so it seemed, <br />the ground was dirt and had been dug, <br />presenting now as darkened garden soil, <br />still moist and full of secret thoughts. <br />He'd done it once before, where flies <br />a trifle bigger, copulated just the same <br />on walls that had seen better days, <br />and smelled much better air. <br /> <br />He was Canadian, carpenter by trade, <br />and kept a library of sorts, at home, <br />all books of Hamann, Fritz, the Kraut, <br />who chopped them up using a hatchet, <br />ground the meat and added spices, well, <br />it was a job and someone had been picked, <br />by God or devil, as a smallgoods chef, <br />he never went without, no cutlery was used, <br />he needed the plaisir of licking all the taste <br />off stiff arthritic fingers and thin lips. <br /> <br />They locked his sorry self away in Calgary, <br />and gave him paper and a well-oiled Remington, <br />it took just weeks before the memoirs were done, <br />and boxes of those notes arrived in droves, <br />they'd be alright across the line, no one could know, <br />that Dad was the great disciple of Fritz, who ate them all.<br /><br />Herbert Nehrlich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hamann-s-disciple/
