phantoms in our opera...

sometimes it takes
a lifetime
to stop running
from the nightmares
that pursue us,
the mostly small contrivances
of our childhood imaginations;
which like bad B movies
are still running on TV’s
that we in our haste
forget to turn off
they are like kites
whose strings
we hold and run with,
their only power is 
the wind that we provide
even the real bogeymen
become larger by degree
the longer we flee from them;
if we were to stop running
and turn to face them,
I think we might find
the paven street littered
with small and broken kites
and tired, aging demons
that we could reason with
and who perhaps
would prefer to retire
to some more useful shore…
lucy meskill