Afraid Poem by Liam Darke

What are you afraid of?
Monsters in the dark?
Walking alone in the park?
Snakes, heights or a spider?
Or your world getting wider?

What are you afraid of?
Are you afraid of a color of skin?
In a clash of ideas you can't win?
Are your beliefs so thin, so brittle
They crumble under some prattle?

What are you afraid of?
Are you afraid of your dark soul?
So that xenophobia is the only goal?
So afraid of growth and of changing
You fight progress and social rearranging.

What are you afraid of?
Afraid of the world you've made?
Of voices rising, choosing unafraid?
The cracks in the walls you've built so high,
afraid truth seeps in, no matter how you try?

What are you afraid of?
Are you afraid oh hand of the law?
Of justice undoing the power you draw?
Is the weight of control too heavy to bear,
That equality feels like the ultimate scare?

What are you afraid of?
afraid of the the minds that ignite,
Spark of ideas that shatter the night?
Fear voices unbound & wisdom cascading,
A rising rebellion your power degrading?

What are you afraid of?
Those shams those pillars of state?
The shifting of tides you can't placate?
A system so rigid it cannot bend,
Terrified of a world you can't defend?

What are you afraid of? Tell us true—
Is it the future no longer needing you?