This one was born of my own boredom with the horror-movie franchise whose increasingly formulaic installments hit theaters annually in October.

Paranormal Inactivity

By Joe Nazare

Tonight I won’t do the flying dishes
Or the mood lighting of random rooms.
The furniture can remain precisely arranged
And the dog’s chain unrattled.
To hell with the low but baleful moaning,
All the tossing in beds and snatching of covers.

Why bother
When there’s always tomorrow (and tomorrow and…).
Time ultimately grinds the edge off the most spiteful grudge,
Turns the vastest repertoire hauntingly familiar.
Restlessness, I’ve realized, isn’t a sustainable state;
Even the ethereal can be weighed down by lethargy.

For further sampling of Autumn Lauds: Poems for the Halloween Season (the complete 62-poem volume can be purchased on Amazon), check out the book’s dedicated page here on this website, and these past posts:

“Ulalume and Ulalume II”

“Fourteen Ways of Looking at Fall Foliage”

“Seize the Season”

“Angry Villager Vocals”

“Shock Treatment”

“Lauding Autumn Once Again”

“Gunpowder Plots”

“Autumn Lauds Anniversary”

“At Hand”

“Haunted Attraction”

“Patch Match”