I am shuddering! This really fits the thread. And perfect for fear, it _is_ funny too.
Liz
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Burke [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 1:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: STIMULUS: POETRY AND FEAR
I was about to declare myself out of this stimulus, when I remembered a
most unnerving poem I wrote some years ago about the worst fear of all:
speechlessness. My youngest son had been a gift - ten years after his
brother. He was prem, and had problems, although you wouldn't know it now
(he's 21 and a professional cricketer). As he lay in his cot, snoozing
through a rainy night in the hills around Perth, I woke from a goddamn
awful nightmare:
_Nightmare_
Time takes different corners
in the dark
I was holding my baby son
he was smiling and I
hugged him something fell
out of his mouth I picked it
off his bib it was his tongue
Fear froze me I lost my tongue
grunted in fear snorted holding it
my head thrashing his face
smiling his tongueless mouth open
as a cave
His tongue had come out
bloodless and warm like a fish
from the river-I stood
tongue in one hand
songless baby in the other
I wanted to wrap the tongue in a towel
but I couldn't move speechless I couldn't
cry out he should have cried out
his mother would have come if he had cried out
He was smiling at me thrashing my head
fitfully holding his tongue
I wake and sweat
I flick my tongue and hear
frogs in
the first autumn rain
Andrew
PS: When I read that poem in public, older people shudder, but little kids
laugh and fall about. I laugh with them, and have fun, but all the time it
shakes me up.
AB
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Andrew Burke Copywriting
[log in to unmask] Creative Writing
http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
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