What real horror is

I'm always amused at people writing things
trying to scare each other with scenarios,
people going through nightmarish things,
with horrific things inside their minds
and horrific things inside their hearts,

When real horror, true horror, is right in front of us.
When one stands while one's father is dying of renal failure
and who will die during the night;
or when one watches a man get beheaded on video,
the man's eyes screaming for help before he gets his head cut off,
why does anyone need to make things up?

Horror is all around us, all the time, everytime we go to a funeral,
everytime we watch people we love suffer needlessly,
and we don't need to make this up;
we just have to observe it up close
and remember
where the real horror
is

Jean Jones received his MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio and has had a book published by St Andrews Press out of St Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina entitled Birds of Djakarta. He currently teaches English as a Second Language in the Basic Skills Department of Cape Fear Community College, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Find more by Jean Jones in the Author Index.

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