Some people swore that the house was haunted. 
 
It sat low, surrounded by unkempt and jagged grass, crowded by clumpy shrubs and dark, viney trees.  Darkness clung, diminishing lightness and drawing it down.  Heavy and sinking, witnesses waited to see it list to one side.  They whispered and scrunched their shoulders in twitchy shudders.  In the midst of wandering, well-dressed souls, the Smith house wrested quietly in a row of unnoticed neighboring homes.  Speculating observers only stopped there.  Dark curiosity arrested fertile minds.  Stories were told, but the Smith house mystery remained.  It hung, waiting for an answer.  It hunched, giving the strong impression that it was about to do something. 
 
For the watchers, bored in their corners and shadows, the consternation of the curious entertained deliciously.  They waited for someone to come too close.  Most resisted the temptation to touch, but from the ranks of the under-thinking, someone always became prey to the guards.  The house seemed alive but sick, not right in some elemental way.  Like if you touched its flat surface, it would possess a barely discernable pulse.  If a long stretch of time went by with no victims, the watchers hid the warning signs.  The chief guard always punished them mercilessly when they tricked people, but he never forced his minions to bring them back. 
 
So the legend and the mystery surrounding the house grew.  Suspicions and fear were reinforced when patrons disappeared.  And yet, they continued to come.  Invited and dared by subtle cues, they came and stared and spread the news.  The other homes were largely left alone. 
 
Often in the crowd, an old man stood.  Silent and stooped he watched as well.  He left as he came, unnoticed and alone.  If you noticed you could see that he watched not the house in its darkness but the eyes of the people.  He searched and shuffled away disappointed.
 
Then one day, something changed.  The house did list.  Unmistakably crooked, too heavy on one side.  Crowds grew and whispers coalesced, humming.  The watchers paced nervously.  This new development unsettled the sense of balance.  The old man stood with them quietly, turned sideways, he looked at their eyes.  Finally, he moved away from the ranks and stopped in front of another house.  Gazing at it for a while, a smile turned up the corner of his wrinkled mouth.  A small boy wandered over.  Tilting his head, he looked up at the man and followed his smiling gaze to the house.  Bright and straight it stood, comfortable and warm.  Sunshine reflected and birds splashed in rain puddles.  The house next to it shared the same light.  He found himself smiling as well.  He turned round and round and saw that the whole room was filled with paintings of bright, happy homes with only one dark, scary one.  After pondering a little, he whispered to the man, “why is everyone looking at that ugly house instead of these pretty ones?”  “Ask them,” the man replied.
 
So the little boy, standing by the old man, asked loudly, “Why isn’t anyone looking at the happy houses?  Do you like to feel scared and sad?”  His question broke the spell.  Like magic, the pull of the crooked picture shriveled and the people spread throughout the room.  The museum curators came from the corners and talked with the visitors, telling stories of art and artists.
 
The next morning, on a post in front of the crooked house, was a note.  “Be naught drawn only to darkness, but consider more the light.”  It was signed, Mr. Smith.
 
Nothing was ever the same again after that.
 
 
 

Strolling studiously slow
In my sticky fingers
Focused on near attention
Pretending not to linger

Instant potatoes
Waxen beans
Tawdry fixens
Minimum means

Casting glances not quite furtive
Certainly not knowing
Connecting in my mind
With the place I am going

Clinking on plastic
Trays and cheap silver
Cardboard milk boxes
Cold peas all a dither

Across the room
Corner of my eye
A big handle comb
Flies through the sky

Crowd stops and watches
The clinking gets quiet
No chew and no swallow
Awaiting the diet

Of luck or of shame
Of coolness or lame
By catching or dropping
Will it bring him great fame?

Windows part foggy
With fingertip scrawls
Floor kinda sticky
With smashed up meatballs

Barely a motion
Slight turn of hand
Comb in my fingers
I stop still and stand

Don’t look surprised
I think in my head
If they think it a’ purpose
You’ll win them instead

Hesitation erupts
In a rapturous cheer
I loft the green comb
With a wave and a leer

For now in this instant
Flung on me by chance
I’ve become quite a man
In my bell-bottom pants