Suddenly No One Is There Poem by William J Seifert

The mounting surge I would come to call common
The car exhaust restlessness from the epiphany:
I will never sleep the same again
Incited in an old peeling country house that sat by an interstate
And by a starter pistol fever dream shattering the illusion of youth
For three nights it came like unrelenting growth spurts
Tractor trailers from the road infused with a prophecy told by Orson Welles
(Now a problematic 80's documentary about doomsday)
Connecting Libya and devils and Armageddon in a cold war tantrum
Blue turbans and air strikes and the cavalier newsmen with cyborg eyes
"Death to American devils" echoing powerful like nothing I ever heard
Until all of it is pounding my sleep into a nightmare I've never dreamt

Ten years old and it came to me an unwanted vision unfathomable
Resulting like a baptism where the cold water cold reminds you
Of the separation between the corporeal world and the world of the mind
And the separation is a chasm never to be traversed
Because these new eyes bring unwelcomed thoughts because transparency is seen
(There are men behind the camera and the stage is full of false props)
So I remember the chest pains on that bike ride with friends after it all
After the nightmare left their glacial scars on my psyche
Riding passed all those houses and lawns I once never needed to understand
But now had to like a sick thirsty dog lapping up antifreeze in the street
As I felt so desperately alone and whispered goodbye to everything ever
Since nothing is what it once was and I could never go back

Outside my body the world was so contrast and dull
I could see colors once there and their traces hurt as they lifted away
The fleeting vapors coloring the past as merely survival
Suddenly the existence of time was understood and visible and deafening
Things moved forward and died like great elephants in the desert
The realization of unseen danger loomed in bittersweet mortality
Bombs became a side of humanity excruciatingly honest
Fear was the hidden cost on the contract you didn't know you signed
And the world is a person with sharp teeth who thinks thoughts so foreign
That it could all end in smoke and fire and charred bodies holding hands
Left to drown in this developing philosophical mind I had to ask
Why isn't anyone scared into stopping it?

The last days of childhood was a sad game of automated pretend
Gathering small trinkets in my arms to stave off the angry breathe
That hounded me for that week and left me so despondent
And I feared could return like a rainstorm out of nowhere
I awoke to the world a cold place because I was changed with knowledge
The long walks to grab some trading cards to organize, divide, and reorganize
Became shameful with an aching unknown guilt
The green plastic army men put in strategic protective places
Became awkward and feeble and alien and inappropriate
Innumerable ways to feel were now gone like clothes outgrown
I could no longer hide in a world I couldn't leave to a world that wasn't there

My early adolescence became hiding and listening in plain sight
To those grownups drinking coffee around the table
Talking grownup talk, affable and soothing in the light of doom
As I sat outside the door longing for comprehension
It became a comfy blanket because they were not scared
So I was safe even as the presence of fear remained
And it would always remain because scars only dull over time

The inimitable things we do
The mundane rituals
To lay over the intolerable truth of life
Captured in autumn leaves
Chaos bound on a precipice
The small vibrations we don't see
But know are there
When is the last shake before the fall?
Can it be predicted?
Can it be stopped?
All the things we miss waiting for the last shake
Before the leaf drops to the ground