Industrial frights, smiled-through scares –

as if the night’s not dark enough as it is.

Boo, how scared are you?

Do we suffer so much

that we must 

quench our fear with laughter?

Trick or treat or have you ever wondered

how one day 

all of it will end?

I fear no puppets jumping out of boxes,

but the springs that coil inside us.

I fear no faces clad in plastic masks,

but what skulks that hidden shadow’s ring.

I fear no night that lay in October’s end,

but the terrors our new world brings.