Fear Beneath All Fears

Every fear is fear of death. Wilhelm Stekel

The veneer hides not a tortured soul,
nor camouflages an invisible person.
From fear to denial the artery flow
injects a mold with opaque features,
quick to set, lest prying eyes
penetrate the mask’s deceptions.
Dermis swells and hardens,
quilts mind’s darkest corner.
Dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn,
awake or in dreams,
deep beneath the layers,
where the reptile coils,
the unconscious choice remains
 to fight or flee.
Sometimes white,
frozen within a retracted shell
mirrors reflect a self, only the self
without mourning, without love,
to guard.
Sometimes red
pride ignites,
scorches without remorse,
or dissipates in wisps of smoke,
to attack.
Sometimes black
blindness bobbles in the abyss of fear
fights the minnows
flees the sharks,
to defend.
Every moment, every breath
survival sought--
until death wins the fight
and life has no flight.