An invisible cincture
suddenly binds itself to my forehead,
tighten, ever tightening
with frightening ripples of migraine efficiency.
Briefly,
the vice grip of urgency and fear surges in my tangled thicket of senses.
I panic and imagine eventually seeing my blood and brain matter splattered
in grotesque gooey clumps upon the pillow and walls
as some macabre eulogy to my final desperate and terrorized breaths.
Then an amber starburst paints the room and displaces the flames of ache
while transparent torsos clad as headless and writhing Victorian era apparitions
sway in the air and begin swirling around the room.
Their ghoulish ballet ends
once an unseen organ plays "Aulde Lang Syne,"
sucking them under my shaking bed with death moans of protest.
In my trembling and traumatic haze
an alarm summons the morning light’s glaze,
leaving my eyes stained and scarred during the light
by whirlwind images of translucent nineteenth century companions
who refuse to visit only at night.