Pride fills your chest and you feel anthemic Your thoughts are contagious Pervasive, pandemic Phrases like lasers Searing gazes At empty stages
But in the background A playwright bleeds out on paper Everyone told him fear is not real But the lie burns acrid Tastes like acid What idiot would back this? Grappling with ghosts Only gets your *** kicked
Ignore it, and It becomes a rope around your throat Choking love Choking hope It’s a gag dipped in vinegar Tightened over tongue Wafting in your nostrils Water in your lungs
Embrace it? It is sound and fury And makes you question That you have any questions left to ask Or any words left to say Any poems meant to write Any battles worth the fight Any gifts left to give Any life left to live
Poet, Fear has a body With a thousand different heads This is what it looks like This slimy source of all your dread It's your mother when she told you to get a "real" job It's your bills, it's your rejection slips It's the "Sorry, not the right fit"s It's the superstars Without your scars Whose work reads like ****
Fear is real Don’t ever let them tell you differently It’s real and it’s homicidal it's maniacal and it's wild it grips a butcher knife and it comes to carve out your heart cut away the playwright's smile
So, poet, posture cat-like Beckon the foaming dog to bite But bite you on your ground tonight "I won’t pretend you aren’t there so you can shadow my back dagger between my ribs **** my dreams in their crib"
Come get me, Fear I smell you I feel you I’m ready for you