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Fear: the Bully and the Fight Within By Reggie Marra A child, I learn that I do not know how to fight. Smacked, seen, but never heard, I learn to disappear. At play I feel the plastic pistol butt in Kevin's hand cracking down atop my head. Still, I learn that I do not know how to fight. The crew-cut vice-principal threatens to expel me if I do not cut my hair: At sixteen I learn to fight. At work, the vice-president vilifies me publicly, confusing his position with my self; my quick-trigger tongue is locked and loaded and his angry, careless comments meet my loud, exhaustive, accurate arsenal, my steel-trap memory of his every slight and imperfection, my white-hot explosion where a cool damp spitball would suffice; I silence him with words of rage. Surprised, exposed, he later tries to ally himself with me: I refuse. Now the politician, the insurance agent, the police sergeant, the paid endorser, the billionaire manufacturer, the parish priest, everywhere I look and listen, and Ed McMahon in my mailbox again and again, try to sell me their cures for a fear I no longer have and I say, No, until the midnight gunkid jams the cold steel barrel further into my bleeding temple and drags me back behind the diner's stinking dumpster; I taste death-- wonder if I will see the flash, hear the boom, feel anything. The fight within me, still, I breathe: he fumbles through my wallet for some meaning and a sense of self, but finding only credit cards and cash holds me closer and demands, Don't you know who I am-- I could blow your brains out without blinking an eye. I breathe, the fight within me, still: And don't you know who I am, I respond, I could have you blow my brains out without blinking an eye. Reggie writes: "The closing dialogue in [this poem] was inspired by a talk by Ram Dass on facing death." |
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Document last modified on: 01/06/2007