IISZ 2018 Challenge #8 - Fear

[nibbed]

Death Is Forgetting

The car explodes like at the end
of a chase scene in a movie.
The cancer chews through my organs—
little, hungry worms. I imagine 
weeping at my bedside, and still, 
don’t understand why I should tremble.

I was like a child before my mother died 
in that I didn’t understand death.
Every morning, I would crank a jack-in-the-box,
and wait for the music to stop.
This car crash death is more a fear of life,
the child alone in a dark room afraid
to go to sleep. I’ve since learned

Death is for the living,
and its fear is in forgetting
and being forgotten.
For the dead, the music stops
the lid flies open, and then
we push them into the box
and snap it closed. We reach

into a pocket full of holes
for a memory or a voice, 
and find our hand empty.
So we close our eyes,
imagine a car crash,
and wait for someone
to turn on the light.

We reach

into a pocket full of holes
for a memory or a voice, 
and find our hand empty.


such poignant verse


-nibbed

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In the Nightmare

In the nightmare
my father is alive again 

paranoid and venomous
with dementia

demanding I confess
what I have done with his son.

I am thinking in many directions with this poem, that's really good
I like how it somehow spews light which makes it clever
I also thought it could portray legalism

-nibbed