an Ode to "Terror"

Long have I fought against you,
Lord Terror,
but i am weary:
your minions are everywhere

As a small child
they pinned me to a hard chair
and tortured me with facts and formulas

as a youth,
i heard your message from the church pulpit
and my heart quivered
to think of eternal, crackling hell-fire

grown older and gnarled,
i Braved you everyday
on the chaotic highways of america

i ran from you
to a land of green smoke
where I bathed away years
in warm lakes of liquor...
but you turned into
a dread blue sea monster and
i narrowly dodged your alluring jaws

i went home to the library
but even there
I only shook you for a little while:
you turned into meaninglessness
and stalked me
from many a respectable, scholarly page

i fled and, disconsolate,
wandered the world...
and found you in a Thai silver factory,
in unnatural fish tanks,
in the racket of scientific machinery
constructing temples to the God of Greed,
in white, sanitary hospitals
that reek of the modern disease

i grow tattered and insane,
but clearly see now
that you are King of America
and king of the age;

i would do as well
to joust against the rain;
So, i lay down my sword in surrender,
and beg to be your page.