My Brother's Pet

A strange beast lives inside my Brother's head.

Half-Brother, not full sib, and mentioned

because it's true, not because I'm distancing

myself from him — no words in years —

okay, distancing.

Resperidone dormants the creature for months,

even years, but soon, feeling better and memory short,

Gerald tosses his amber bottles aside —

as the beast uncoils from hibernation,

loosing six-legged bears, two-headed cobras,

an occasional assassin, only he can see.

I thought he just viewed the world askance,

till I read his diary, phantasms — the beast.

Once, like Jacob I tried to wrestle it to submission —

failure. There is no Israel in this story.

And so it remains, emerging like a black widow,

every August, or even sooner.