It has become familiar

You feel it through the mattress – a tremor

 

and the way it

lurches toward you in a fall

 

Do you fear the Death Demon

who relishes the taste of living skin

 

One Nordic tribe’s sacred rite

preemptively cut their old ones up

 

Abiding beneath a cool celadon sun

another had no fear

 

for at the great bar piled high with eatables

the drunk dead feast

 

He has Mephistophelian skills

Don’t think for a moment He isn’t real!

 

Consider the evidence

Walking you catch yourself talking to the absent

 

Passing by He smirks

Whenever there’s a pause   He interrupts