Fear of Pain

PoemWork in Progress
Written By Matt Antis

To compete with the elite:

Justify your past
Hide your shame
Ruin their future
Push the blame

Prevent repentance
Don’t get healed
Shroud the evidence
Lies sealed

Fight forward
Disguise truth
Bury the past
Destroy the future

Wear masks
Sell your ground
Emotional suture
Tears at a cloud

Lament privately
Die alone
Children confused
Grandchild disowned

To confess is regress
Prevent the repentant
Soul epidural installed
Status quo is expectant

Keep it numb
What is pain?
How far will we go?
Inject Novocain

Bury it down
Become death
As good as it gets
Lay you to rest

Copyright © 2021 by Matt Antis. Originally published in Poet’s Guild’s Poem-A-Week on February 20, 2021, by Ink Jot Kingdom.

Matt Antis

Matt Antis creates online as a freelance writer and novelist who formerly lived as a serial small-business entrepreneur. His life’s goal is to share knowledge, encourage, and challenge others through a coach-student relationship.

An unexpected deployment with the Army in 2009 halted his scholastic achievement, but! He learned the bulk of business in the proverbial trench elbow to elbow with a team of professionals who he is forever grateful for.

When he’s not being a husband, dad, shooting his bow or training parkour, you can find him teaching Sunday school, advising parkour gyms, writing for inkjotkingdom.com and his wife’s children’s book website, whitneyantis.com.

https://inkjotkingdom.com
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