Gotham Nights

The script calls for rain and it rains: pencil rods
lacerate the page, dark against dark ink,
and the Dark Knight broods, the pathetic fallacy
of a million readers keeping him young
after fifty years of comicbook hell:
too many murders, too many Jokers
doing so well what Jokers do best. Batman falls,

taut on a rope that floats him to a roof
where this month's cast is assembled, where ink
raws the hair of the Joker from the page
as he toadstools a banker, laughs; then he's turning
to the giant bat that has to haunt his trail:
too many murders, too many choking suitors
in the world's script. Cue batarang. He falls.

So buy this month's edition, its plastic bag
hermetic for the corpse in spilled ink.
Rejoice in thirty days of 2-D,
where endings, though unhappy, are designed.
Thank God for the Batman. Thank God for the chill
rain of Gotham that lacerates our saviour,
our statue that guards all bodies that fall.

Philip Wilson

If you've any comment on this poem, Philip Wilson would be pleased to hear from you.