Interactions in (un)controlled conditions

Here is the boy who once caused Chernobyl
to be known as terror-not-town.
It was singlehanded and he was just fifteen
years of slow meltdown, design-flaws, all
his wrong secret buttons pushed in sly dark – a child,
who first heard the word delusion as an echo
down a hot tunnel of dissolving ground

The concrete sarcophagus for his containment was ugly, poured
in the frightened 1970
to conceal runaway reactions from the general populace
until they safely (oh privately, quietly please) exhausted themselves

Inside, he found several alien suns still glowing, right
where the lino in the back corridor was scorched, a blast-map
orbited by squeakshoe nurses (15 minute check!), and in that universe
each 2am LadyJesus flamed hard with belief,
post-slot breast flapped up, on Sundays she wept Latin and milk, baptised
him in the night-bulb glow
of her earnest sacred heart

He thanked…