Fear

More so than disembodied spirits
or the icy, blood-chugging undead,
or cracks that creak in the floorboards
when all signs of life are still and quiet,
I find terror in the cruelty that humans
can inflict upon one another.

The despots of history have
Impaled their foes from end to end,
gutted from bowel to soft palette.
Nailed limbs to slabs of wood
so that chests hung forward,
lungs buckling under the
weight of vertebrae,
death by suffocation.
Immersed essential airways into
depths of gelid water, causing the
mind to constrict while limbs thrash
Employed such technology
as barbed wire and blow torches
in exchange for information.

Idealistic battles breaking the human body.