deepundergroundpoetry.com

A Taste for Violence

Sometimes, I’m still
nine years old and stood
in the hallway with
my eldest brother,
as our other brother’s
knocked about upstairs.
My eyes are wet.
My eldest brother smirks
in that manner of his,
an attitude he’ll always take to life.
You could make it stop, he says.
Dad likes you best.

I’m thirty now. And living on my own,
for once, I’ve slowly reached
a place of understanding that
I don’t like fights, or even raised voices.

When I was five or so years old
I got lost at a holiday camp.
I’d been taken to a boxing match
and fled, upset by the violence.

Yet most of what I read is violent.
And I’ve a theory that
most horror writers are cowards.

You can’t imagine Hemingway
telling a decent ghost story.

He’d have fetched a blunderbuss
and filled the ghoulish troop with lead...

Sometimes, I’m still nine
and teary-eyed. Or five years old
and stricken with terror.
And that informs my taste,
just as a child raised in Africa
starts to like lions.
Written by The_Silly_Sibyl (Jack Thomas)
Published
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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