"The Lie"

I first encountered this poem in the September 2009 issue of Poetry Magazine and thought it was pretty darn creepy and haunting. Now I'm thinking about using it in "Creepy Lit" this fall. Thoughts? Bonus: there's audio of the poet reading it at this site.

"The Lie" 

Don Paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour

before the house had woken to make sure

that everything was in order with The Lie,

his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

I was by then so practiced in this chore

I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more

since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.

Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.

I was at full stretch to test some ligature

when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore

his gag away; though as he made no cry,

I kept on with my checking as before.

Why do you call me The Lie? he said. I swore:

it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor.

The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky

and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.

He was a boy of maybe three or four.

His straps and chains were all the things he wore.

Knowing I could make him no reply

I took the gag before he could say more

and put it back as tight as it would tie

and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

Maybe it's too creepy? Too disturbing? Too weird? I don't know. And man...that last stanza, which inverts the rhyme scheme and then chillingly repeats "locked the door," is just so good.