Still stunned with disbelief...

that our apartment unit B44
received thumbs up
meaning that we passed
the grueling, and harrowing yearly inspection
three days ago - May 28th, 2024.

About a week prior,
when notification circulated

(validating horror about to befall us

as averred courtesy the rumor mill)

courtesy requisite yearly inspection
property manager Kathleen Bergen
placed rolled up
printed one page important bulletin
in respective door handle
of each occupied apartment,
where an individual resident
or married couple - like us – lived),

yours truly and the missus
immediately sprung into action
whereby each of one our
separate nervous systems
underwent uncontrollable bouts
triggering violent expansion and contraction,
where we both made simultaneous
beeline for the bathroom
synonymous with severe bout
of irritable bowel syndrome.

Premonitory signals foretold
the approaching day of reckoning
vis a vis ominous hellish havoc
tell tale warnings since the beginning of time,
whereby frightful visitation
of inquisition videlicet triumvirate
would manifest headless horseman,
as a supernatural entity,
representing a past that never dies,
but always haunts the living.

“The headless horseman
supposedly seeks revenge—and a head—
which he thinks unfairly taken from him"
according to one Franz Potter
additionally equally as unwelcome
as one of the feared biblical plagues
id est: Some of these include:
(1) water turning into blood;
(2) frogs and arov (which arrived together;
arov supposedly originally meant

a mixture of creatures that came
to oppress the Egyptians
in the fourth round of the plagues
nobody knows any more,
but usually translated
as flies or wild animals);
(3) a swarm of locusts;
(4) a destructive hailstorm;
(5) an outbreak of cattle disease
(technically the text says “hail” again …

like totally obscuring

artificial or real illumination
hiding looming dark shadows

edging ever closer
portending, presaging, and pummeling
worse fate than death
rivaling close encounters of the third kind
outer limits of the twilight zone
monstrous sinister forbidding shapes
blotting sunlight plunging
highland manor apartment in total darkness.

Our rented one bedroom unit
b44 spruced up in ship shape,
thus me and the wife
cautiously optimistic figurative campers
worse case scenario

possibly find us forced to live in a tent
among bunch of other homeless people
along skidrow,

thus we felt fruitless effort to yield,
and appeal to top banana
who would love nothing better
than to witness mister and missus Harris
precariously perched on horns of dilemma

spurred me to posit supposition,
whereby sympathy for the devil witnesses
battle of pitched forks among towering inferno
greater likelihood versus wordsmith
unsuccessfully, nevertheless creatively
blindsiding anonymous readers
spellbound to empty willy nilly
bajillions of dollars
from their pocketbooks
and mail blank checks to yours truly
before coming to their collective
sense and sensibility bound with
pride and prejudice.