The Screaming Night Sky

The night has

razor claws

soused in horror.

It slinked

down back roads

and alleys

with a murderous man.

"Listen," they said

"don't go out... don't go out alone."

He stalked the bars

smiling in neon's sordid dazzle

propped himself in the backlit shadows

behind restaurants

then slipped into

a young nurse's apartment

his sharp knife glistening

with anger's savage heat.

A young waitress

found in her bathtub

her blood pooled

in the cracks upon the floor.

Out on 79 South

secluded detour

dirt roads

junked school bus

county sheriff deputies

searched and found

the body count went up.

“Psssst... do you know who's here?”

the nightly news

buzzed alerts

enlightened the public

flaring edgy nerves

as the gory trail of death

telecast between farm reports

and Reaganomics.

Not ones to hide,

my friends and I

cruised our night paths

down Main Street.

I parked

my blue metallic

Buick Regal

pulled into the mall parking lot

8 PM in the dark of

an autumn night

stepped out into the silence

in new shoes

not once thinking

of madness and proximity

or counting the steps

from my car.

Meanwhile, somewhere

in the boundaries of a clueless city

a soulless killer treaded upon

the evening solitude.

I listened briefly,

no echoing steps

falling upon the pavement

but away

down the avenues

a killer managed

to pump screams into the night.

*Faryion Wardrip is a serial killer who is currently on death row. He was responsible for the deaths of four young women from Wichita Falls, Texas, and one other death in the nearby area. Wardrip was not apprehended for four of these murders until DNA evidence surfaced in 1999. He recounted to authorities the details of the rage that fueled the attack on one of his victims by saying he was out that night, “screaming at the sky.”