Our Fears (poem)

***I have to preface this a bit before you can read it.  First off, one of my favorite poets (Herbert) has a poem entitled "Our Fears," so I thought I would give it a shot.  I don't think I come close to him, but I'll get there one day.  Secondly this stemmed from experiences that I've recently been through.  I've had to really put my life up to a magnifying glass.  I haven't been myself in ages.  I have been a sad little person who has doubted my own abilities to accomplish my own goals.  I have suffered from the fear of settling and the fear of being untalented and worthless.  I know this is some heavy shit, but it's all true.  No more... No more am I going to doubt myself and my ability to be whomever and whatever I want to be.  I know what I want to get out of life and it's time I brought that confidence forward.

ANYWAY...poem time...and please, as always...let me know what you think...(if anything is unclear, if it can be made better)...I want to know.


Our fears leave us as trembling piles, suffocating,
with each attempted breadth grinding us down
more and more, until we feel twisted and wrung out.

And we fear this self-annihilation
leaving us empty of every joyous emotion.
We fear an attack both physical and emotional,
a war, whether it's exaggerated or legitimate:
personal or involving masses.

Our fears have us question fairness only because
we cower to the thought of loneliness.  Yet,
fear and loneliness walk together lovingly
destroying all the grinded down, twisted people
before it.

But we are not the damned, downtrodden and
helpless bastards unless we choose to take
a setback and turn it into defeat.  Some of us slide
so low that we become mud, depressing, grey-brown,
dingy, infested and infected; leaving us impure and clouded
to all reality.  Others rise so high that every beautiful star
in the sky turns into a shuriken ready to rip your fucking head
off.

Our fears keep us from the middle.  They keep us from stability.