(Spill-O’s Date with the Ghosts)

The horror movies tell it again and again:

Reason won’t save him and nowhere is safe.

Heaven’s disbanded armies still bomb and strafe,

Harry us, in a guerilla action without end.

Spill-O once more fails to ignore

How the horrors of bottomless history roar

From the woodgrain walls,

Despite the popcorn, soda and all.

The orgasm and the om

Wait in every brick and plank.

And something else, elusive as what restrains it

Is also here, all too at home

In Spill-O’s quiet entertainments.

The rustle in the bushes, the shadow on the path,

Creeping, unstoppable, like the pull of the stars and math.

Though Spill-O may not hear it nor see,

Something cruel waits at the foot of the reality tree.