Fear
A poem about how fearful I felt today
Fear
It fills my belly
Like rotten fish
From urban bins
My soul
Shrivels
Into tiny, mouldy prunes
Stinking, reeking —
Tears ooze from
My pores
My heart stops
Stops holding onto
The string tied on one
End to Your heart
And the other to mine
I gasp and grasp,
Flailing
Like a drunken sailor
To the slippery side
Of a dingy
Desperately trying to
Haul my fat ass into
Safety
But Society has other plans
She pushes me overboard
Again and again
Thundering down her
Whip
Cracking, screaming
Beating us into obedient
Soldiers, standing in a line
Programmed so
We no longer
Think for ourselves
Where we fumble about
Thinking we are the mistake
That we are wrong
Look around —
Wake up to the reality that our
Lives are not our own
The powers at play
They are scared of us
The people
So blindly walking
Day by day
Unquestioning of their purpose
Unquestioning of their deepest
Darkest desires
We handed Her responsibility
And in exchange
She threw us the shackles
That we so diligently
Tied onto ourselves
Handcuffed — for generations
To the same forces
That drives us
To cry for other mothers
In the darkest parts
Of the night
That wakes us up at 3 am
And make us question
Our very dreams
Our intentions —
Fear rots us
And yet it exists
Only in our capacity to love
It is the shadow
That we are too ironically
Afraid to even address
Like a black hole
It sucks all hope
Into a singularity —
An illusionary loop
As if the only way through it
Is to inflict more fear —
More effluvium
That is what it wants from us
Our shackles tighten
With each turn, twist
And resistance
Stop, my Lover tells me
Breath, rest and sleep
Your Love will guide you
From the confines of
These prisons
Only then
Can you see
That this cage of fear
Is imaginary
And that you were always
Already free
