Edgar Allen Poe had once sparked my interest
Somewhere within the pages of his peculiar stories
With the abstract intensity in his narrator’s voice
He had narrated the tale of a dead heart…
A “tell-tale heart” which at once foiled his diabolical plan
To kill a man and never be suspected…
I’m dying a thousand atrocious deaths as Poe’s villain
Approaches me and I am the piteous victim
As my “tell-tale” heart beats
Synchronizing with the footsteps which draw closer.
Poe’s character had proclaimed repeatedly
That there was pride in him to be scaring the victim
To be lighting a torturous fire within the victim
Which would bubble within but remain nothing
But a mere simmering of his “tell-tale heart”
Because, my friends, the killer assumed that
The victim was as good as dead and that his limbs
Were not going to move in this state of fear.
Yes my heart bubbles but it will not tell the tale
After it beats under the murky wooden floorboards
Because I (fortunately) have yet to become dissembled
By this friend of the psychotic fiend in Poe’s tale of poignancy.
Even as perspiration flows freely in the bitter cold of this winter
And the heat of my heart’s fire defies the cold
I sit up and look this infernal villain in the eye as it steps towards me
No it is most certainly not my teacher: it’s the paper in her hand.
As she smiles and throws a Dora-The-Explorer sticker at me I just stare
At the scrawling in red ink on the upper right corner of the paper.
I got a 95 on my literature final.