Have you ever lost a staring contest
To a pen?
Its eyes stare and petrify
All my limbs
The only movement my body betrays
Is the panicked beating
Of my chest against the warm air

No hunt and no monster
Has ever brought me so close to my death
Fight, only another excuse
to guard myself, and hide within
the old, motherless womb
the steel framework of bones,
my ribs encase more than lungs

But this pen, allied with
The gruesome,  horrifying, smiling
Faces of the kind kinfolk
Has chased me to the corner
Brought chains and locks to furnish me
Like a window frame or a stylized vase

The only teeth I fear
To sink deeply within me
And spill my blood
A display to the world

Silly- I am called a grown man,
Yet what I fear most
Is a small plastic cylinder
Resting on a yellow pad