HORACE

Little Horace may have been a creation

of Lucifer's diabolic imagination,

never walked, just ran, whirling in circles,

arms flapping like a run-away albatross.

When he came near, you were

under attack by an army of swarming gnats.

Even when asleep movement never ceased,

the house resounding with head banging on the wall,

like the drumming of warriors on the way.

At school mirror images made no sense,

letters were jumbled or upside down.

taunted by classmates who thought him a fool, he was last seen

prancing on the roof after setting fire to the school.

"Expelled, expelled, expelled," his jubilant mantra.

Smacked around during father's post-six-pack tirades,

black and blue face imprinted with a Masonic ring.

Huddled with rabbits in a hutch he built from scratch,

rubbed against his favorite angora and dreamt revenge.

Mother soothed her baby boy, youngest of six, changed wet sheets

while he sucked his thumb and watched cartoons.

One Sunday morning when el nino rumbled

the sky filled with mackerel clouds.

Horace backed father's truck out

as his family walked home from church.

A raging father stood his ground in the driveway

purple faced and apoplectic bellowed for him to STOP!

Horace backed right over him pedal to the floor,

kept on going and never looked back.

Milton P. Ehrlich