never dabble in horror

God is Underneath Your Bed
by Joel Helbling
Saturday, December 30, 1995, en route to Parker City, Indiana

When you sit alone at night,
Fell spirits of the past are crowding in your sight;
When darkness cloaks your pain in art,
Shielding from mockery the face of your broken heart;
Shadows twist across the ceiling,
Grasping at the corner where the wall resists unfeeling;
And imps read horrid tales aloud from the diary of your mind,
Gnawing at your peace of heart and spitting out the rind.
Don’t omit one horrifying tale:
God is underneath your bed.

If wights of other peoples’ cruelty rattle in your breath,
Dragging in the chilly chains of ignominious death;
Hobgoblins with microphones and “live video feed”
Mob your plastic countenance until they see it bleed;
If a hundred thousand thorny bones
Grow from a tiny pit
Whose origin you cannot find
To kill or alter it;
Sate not your lust for woe upon this draught of bliss,
But save your tortured palette for the worst–for it is this:
God is underneath your bed.*

*The scientific Authority states this very plain:
That God is just a filament of dendrites in your brain.
The real truth, though less technical, is still an awful fact:
He’s much to big for ‘in your head;’ He’s underneath your bed.

Your will was sold in hell to bend you to its fire,
Hounds sent out to fetch you thence do chase and never tire;
Throngs of mediocre souls will hiss you as you pass,
Revile the frozen soil you trod and jeer at you en mass;
Refuge after refuge stands derelict and cold,
And vultures wheeling overhead are growing ever bold.
The fields are full of razors,
The woods are full of scissors,
The air is full of darkened verses
Your ears are full of blackened curses;
The worst I haven’t told you yet; now don’t forget:
God is underneath your bed.

When God is underneath your bed, you face a fate
Less fearful minds ignore or can’t appreciate.
Lesser fears must yield to Him as chief
Of all that vexes you to grief;
For He can move from underneath your bed;
Converse with you from deep inside your head.
And if you still don’t hear or comprehend
He’ll whisper to your heart to make it mend.

If His pleasure is to fill up all the room,
And banish all the cobwebs of its gloom
He can.
If He’d rather sit with you and speak
In quietness of things that happened just last week
He will.
If He chooses to exist,
If He chooses to comfort,
To cherish,
To heal…
He is always, always underneath your bed.