As children,

we trembled before our closets darkness night fell,

like a deep black crushed velvet shade being draped over our world,

donning our pajamas like a knight dons his armour before battle,

little fingers sweating and shaking as we try to force the buttons in their slots,

afraid of what was inside,

I thought as I grew these fears would dissipate,

but then the truth occurred,

In this world there are monsters,

But they don't live under a child's mattress,

Or among the hangers that are draped with our favorite sweaters,

 

They come out with the sun as it rises,

Trudging and slithering through the sand of a middle eastern desert,

the dunes like waves on an ocean of citrine, glittering in the sunlight

Children's bodies clutched between angry, yellow, gnashing teeth,

Innocent wide eyes caught in an everlasting moment of terror

once spirited and lively irises are now dull and flat like day old soda pop,

Blood snaking from the monsters snarling jowels,

Red like the corrections on a schoolboys failed test

"No no! Do it this way!" written across color drained skin,

 

The monsters sit upon thrones of cash and gold

The green and glimmering metal intertwining with rubies and sapphires

Glinting and winking at you from behind his tailor made shoulders,

A smoldering stogie laced between a middle finger that doesn't even need to be raised to the world,

And a jewel encrusted index finger that could determines the nation's direction,

Never-mind the oval office,

His side is the most powerful position,

Aged scotch in a glass swirling around ice like rocks in an amber whirlpool,

With one point of that bejeweled finger he can control the masses,

"Sell this, undress her, more product, more product, more product."

 

The monsters can stand tall and proud at the head of a battle field

On Top of a mountain range of corpses,

Built from women, children, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters,

The monsters scream and heave from their chests,

"I do this in the name of MY god, I do this for his love!"

consumed by fear and well guided misconceptions,

they’ve lost the true meaning of their beliefs,

see these monsters seem to have confused love with a sub-machine gun,

 

These monsters,

They snatch children from their beds, to twirl them away to their own twisted basement dreams,

To use them for the needs of all perverted fiends minds,

Tearing girls and boys from both family and childhood,

to grow up like rabbits in a cage,

only ever taken out to play,  

nothing will ever be able to Frankenstein their psyche back to a whole if they survived,

 

And even worse

 

These monsters, they’re more real than your favorite rapper on stage,

More real than the ink decorating this page,

These are the bricks that build skyscrapers out of my childhood night terrors,

I could tell you that these monsters wear suits and shirts

That you could never tell them apart in a bar or crowd,

 

But the point is to be disgusted with yourselves,

We're all just destruction in individualized cells,

We stuff our skeletons in the closet and tell our children to fear what we've put there,

to cover their eyes with their favorite quilt,

that as long as they grow up everything will go away,

but it won't ever go away,

because

there are monsters in this world.