Richard Spilman
The Horror
There are times in every horror flick
when the inklings become real,
when ordered domesticity yields
to the rattle in the wall, the man
in the shadows, masked and armed
with instruments of torture,
when things long dead impale
whatever has replaced them
and every break from conformity
meets the saw or the cleaver.
We should be prepared then
for this new misadventure,
when the savior in his decaying
boat brings us to the heart
of darkness, to the charlatan
who knows that shrunken heads
offer the completest sacrifice.
For in the empire of avarice
you need a boatload of cannibals
to bring home the rotting corpse
of the old century, a charlatan
blaming all he came to exploit
for the sickness, the fever,
the hunger he cannot control.
when the inklings become real,
when ordered domesticity yields
to the rattle in the wall, the man
in the shadows, masked and armed
with instruments of torture,
when things long dead impale
whatever has replaced them
and every break from conformity
meets the saw or the cleaver.
We should be prepared then
for this new misadventure,
when the savior in his decaying
boat brings us to the heart
of darkness, to the charlatan
who knows that shrunken heads
offer the completest sacrifice.
For in the empire of avarice
you need a boatload of cannibals
to bring home the rotting corpse
of the old century, a charlatan
blaming all he came to exploit
for the sickness, the fever,
the hunger he cannot control.
Biography
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Richard Spilman was born and raised in Normal, Illinois, half a block from Main Street and on the banks of Sugar Creek. In some ways, he has never escaped. He is the author of In the Night Speaking and of a chapbook, Suspension. He is also the author of two books of short fiction, Hot Fudge and The Estate Sale.
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