And now the blogger’s terror:
To have nothing left to say
That anyone would want to read,
Or ought to, anyway
Or fear you might have passed that point
A dozen posts ago:
For boring people always seem
To be the last
To know
[Note – for those who don’t recognize such things, the silver-black item on the left of the photo is what was once called a “landline” telephone. – Owen]
So many of our fears are trivial,
But daily they are there, like loyal friends;
Our worry that some small thing on our person
Will be the thing that distracts
And offends
To be fair, many really have no fear
Of ever doing this, for they make sure
To point out their opponent’s always wrong;
All their opinions, just so much manure
But sometimes, maybe, there’s a sneaking fear
That our opponents, by some random law,
Just might right about some little thing:
We dwell on this a moment, then say
Nah
To avoid these things:
We’ll drink too much
We’ll date the wrong people
We’ll marry the wrong people
Have kids with the wrong people
Stay way too long where we’re not wanted
Stay too long with people we don’t want to be with
Take risks to our jobs
Our health
Our relationships
Our honor
Everywhere I look
The twin fears
Of boredom
And loneliness
Dominate our actions
And yet
To hear activists talk
It’s all greed
To hear moralists talk
It’s all lust
But these two fears
Of boredom and loneliness
Account for more otherwise unaccountable things
Than all the greed and lust in the world
Combined
To be rejected is, I think,
A very common fear:
To be discarded by our friends,
Or others we hold dear
But there’s a type that’s worst of all,
To find ourselves reviled,
Dismissively rejected by
Our blood
Our hearts
Our child
I’ve never seen a vampire,
A zombie or a ghost;
I have no fears of them, although,
I have more fears than most
To make this Halloween, therefore,
Stand out from other years:
I thought I’d catalog, instead,
Our normal, daily fears
The things that cause us angst, and make us doubt:
For fear is what this day is all about…
In three hours’ time, this room will fill;
He’ll take his place upon the stage —
He’s full of nervous energy,
And vague fears that are hard to gage
But all end in embarrassment;
This worry fills him to the brim —
A boring conference, we might say:
But it’s not that
To him
