I Remember The Year I Quit Climbing Trees Poem by Ted Sheridan

My flesh is being eaten by a beast with no face and no form.
This beast has no powerful jaws or sharp teeth with which
to rip and tear the life I have left from my bone; yet it devours me.
I was always so protective of my health and my safety; having
escaped death on several occasions and then there was the war.
Nothing can compare to the beast of war; but the beast that lives
inside of me now is surely the master of destruction and horror.
It sneaks up on you and unties your shoes like a phantom; leaving
you ill prepared for it’s next trick in which it unties your insides
and prepares you for the mortician’s table. And the only salvation
is in what it leaves of you uneaten and that it may provide the next victim some clues as to how to win the war we all must sooner or later wage against it.
My flesh is being eaten by a beast with no face and no form.
A beast with no heart and no soul…
A beast I thought I had been spared from given my family tree
Alas…it was not to be…

2008 © T Sheridan