Hobo Moon (2022)

Nightmare

After crawling through the muck and the mire, I collapsed on the muddy bank of the swamp gasping for breath. Suddenly the most frighteningly bizarre creature I had ever encountered approached me with a look of curiosity. I recognized it as my cartoon character Nightmare, created during a spell of the most ferocious writer’s block. Unlike my other characters, I knew very little about Nightmare other than its unpredictability, having been created during a bout of alcoholic depression and severe writer’s block, as I have mentioned. But something was telling me I was in a great deal of danger. I had to run.

Hobo Moon (2022)

An excerpt from A Nightmare Come True!
Those hands that once pointed
in every direction
Have failed to move since she gave it away,
And though the band is much too tight,
He still wears it every day.
It helps him to remember
that moonless night.
That night he tried to make her stay.
Losing himself in his own reflection,
He remembers the words that she used to say,
The sweet reverberation,
Trembling from her lips in exasperation.
Eyes lost in a distant fading memory,
Like fog dissipating
with the arrival of the day,
He stares at his watch,
Waiting,
For those hands,
Hoping,
To continue,
Stuck in the past,
Their ritualistic dance.
Those hands.