The Southern Gothic.

I met a troll today along the riverbank
Minding his business, for the most part,
Stringing some barbed wire on the lip of a riverbank.
His name was...well..maybe thats not important
I'm sure he wouldn't care too much.
He was working on building a bridge for the next two years
That made too much sense.

I found myself terrified of his hands
And where they had been.
They slapped and pawed at whatever they met
Like two steel jaws who had been at work
all their stale lives.
I could imagine them closing over me and I shuddered.
He didn't notice. Of course he didn't notice.
He wasn't a troll of small and meager emotions.
An inbred packhorse, more like it. A walking golem,
his backbone transformed to seedy granite.
His adam's apple bobbled like a stone,
chortling beneath his cracked skin.

His eyes never really seemed to focus on anything.
For too long, they had stared at the same tasks
Over and over again.
The mind starts to wander, perhaps,
Until it wanders too far.
And the eyes leave soon after.
I could hear him talking, but the orbs never really met.
They were just there, windows to an abyss.


He had plenty of stories though, great ones at that.
He has a girlfriend, and I find that too ridiculous to even deny.
Scratching the hair on his reptilian nape,
He told me stories of times long ago.
Times when he held 6 men at gunpoint,
Times when he spent months in jail,
Times when he worked on this road and that bridge,
Times when a man created his own grotesque code of chivalry,
Times when a man could become a monster
And the whole world never took time to notice.

I can sense him now, lurking in the night,
not in a dangerous way, but lurking nonetheless.
For how could something like that ever exist with peace?
What hideous mistake did someone make to allow that man
to come to this fate? What tragedy must have befallen?
Sometimes I shudder to think that at night, he
drops to the ground and sniffs the moist earth for
Stories from his fantastic ancestors,
His fellow Gothic monstrostities.

And yet,
I wonder where he trods off at times to sleep,
like a bear or a mammoth to hibernate.
I wonder what haunts his dreams, or what
plagues his past. I wonder why he prounounces iron as "Eye Run" and
where the Gap exists that he says he grew up within.
I want to follow him deep into the darkest hollows and
spy out his wretched lair.
I want to wrap my arm around him and laugh at the same time I shudder.

He's Bigfoot. He's Beorn. He's Grendel.

I met a troll walking along the riverbank.
And I wonder what he's thinking.