Terror Without a Timetable

by Ralph Monday

Dread follows along, creeping behind like
vines on a forest floor. Like taxes and
relationships, love and hate, Elvis and Liberace,
even vodka won’t dull the patina settling over—
a kind of mind Novocain that dulled baptism
in amniotic fluid flowing like a river from
spread thighs.
The feeling can never quite be pinned down,
an insect squirming, wriggling on a pin.
It blooms red within us.
Perhaps it is Oppenheimer’s uncorked genie
in the bottle, Bin Laden’s watery ghost, Nazi’s
singing at the Berlin opera, Wagner’s Valkyrie
ride in Apocalypse Now, Augustine’s conversion
under the tree, the Spanish burning Mayan codices,
Joan of Arc’s visions, or rock and roll burying
Glenn Miller.
Maybe nothing so exotic—more like a bad date
at a drive-in, rush hour traffic, road kill, alimony,
the dentist, the unfathomable rush through space,
or staring muddy-eyed at the clouds in morning coffee.