Red Demon in the Dark
\nVCS<\/p>\n
You come to me at night
\nbut thought you haunt them
\nYou are not the man of my dream
\nYou are the the demon I feared
\nLong ago
\nWhen I was a child
\nAnd I served in the a world of light
\nThat you turned dark
\nNow you come to me again
\nYou always have an excuse
\nFor a man who claims immortality
\nYou’ve claimed to be dying more
\nThan the average mortal
\nYou fear to die alone
\nYou tremble in the shadows
\nClaiming the mantle of a feeble
\nOld
\nShambling
\nDrooling
\nThing
\nRather than face the truth
\nWhere is your fierce gaze now?
\nYour claims in Might Makes Right?
\nWhere are your whips and chains?
\nHidden, only hidden until the spotlight
\nOf scrutiny I have cast on you passes away
\nNothing about you is real
\nThe pain you caused was hard won
\nRunning to assure each servant was too busy
\nChasing after their fear of you
\nTo talk to one another
\nIf we would have faced down our demon
\nYou, who still appears in my night terrors
\nAll lies would be exposed
\nYour glamours would have faded
\nStill, I hear the whisper of my dead mother
\nCrackling on a long disconnected phone line,
\n“his powers are fading”
\nShe whispers from the darkness
\nThe trembling terror in her voice lets me know her lie
\nShe wishes me to come back, she needs me,
\nNot to rejoice in his defeat but to die underneath
\nHis crushing force with her.
\nPutting the phone down
\nWith a sigh
\nLike the rasping of the autumn wind
\nIn dead willow leaves
\nIn his old man’s mantle
\nHe still lays body’s round about him
\nAll who betrayed him are at risk
\nI have survived betraying him more than once
\nWe do battle he and I
\nDealing blows, he meant for death
\nMe, meant for defense, but it feels to him like
\nsomething worse and better than death: betrayal
\n“Ah, at last, a worthy adversary’, he breaths in relief
\nKnowing he has found his true heir
\nI feel sick at his pride in me
\nStanding against him
\nSurviving his blows
\nHe feels this makes me
\nAs evil as he
\nI pray he is wrong
\nI feel it makes me a survivor
\nWhen I see the heap of bodies on which he stands
\nI can’t help but wonder:
\nAnd why do we have the same blue eyes?
\nThe same bottom lip?
\nMost of all;
\nWhat am I, that I still live? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Red Demon in the Dark VCS You come to me at night but thought you haunt them You are not the man of my dream You are the the demon I feared Long ago When I was a child And I served in the a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-87274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-virginia-carraway-stark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87497,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87274\/revisions\/87497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}