Clockwork Lightning

Shelves stretch forever
in my library of fears
Rows of organized visions
Held in the bookends of my ears
Haunting thoughts of make-believe
Infectious plays spawned to deceive
A teetering ride
On the black edge of reality

I float naked in twilight
through a mock desertscape
above a stainless steel highway
Silently racing, unable to escape
Ahead the roadway is twisted razor teeth
I awaiting it's painful shredding of my feet
To awaken sweat soaked
Sticking fly-paper tight to the sheets

A Wizard of Oz tornado
Spinning in sickening slow motion
Eats up the ground as it rumbles my way
While I scramble to avoid the destruction
From my ditch shelter I watch bodies rain
The impact craters blossom in crimson stain
As the flattened figures
Stare skyward in lost expressions of pain

Intense light cuts the darkness
As a figure steps through a small door
and the vast length and height of the hangar
Is revealed from ceiling to floor
The figure yells, "Catch!" as it tosses a pin
Which grows larger with each approaching spin
Until it knocks me down
In mind-blowing special FX slow motion

In the darkening fog
Between huge southern oaks
The Spanish Moss hangs down
Unmoving, at the buckboard's approach
I ride, chased from mansion to mansion,
from room to room, filled with apprehension,
A damp, gray, dead-man's shroud
Suddenly engulfs me; a frightening vision

Shelves filled with bad dreams
In my library of fears
Cataloged rows of visions
Held prisoner between my own ears
Haunting thoughts of spirits and infinity
With a roller-coaster drop through fantasy
The constant teetering ride
On the thin black edge of my reality

R. C. Arquette
4/17/86