Ax Murderers - a poem

Ax Murderers

Jason Voorhees never entered the consciousness of my frail young mind
it wasn't he that plagued my dreams with images of murderers out
to abolish my family from pages of existence. There were no media
notes, in that popular sense, but perhaps a multitude of stories on daily
news cycles. Michael Meyers was not a villain I was accustomed
to noticing, at least not as more than passing mention, but my dreams
were still nightmare fueled, bloody messes, where my brother, mother,
and father were obliterated by stabs, and masses of cuts and punctures,
but majority of time my mother was only survivor, hiding me underneath
an embrace.

Freddy Kruger was not present, it was more traditional types, kinds that killed
in reality, but plagued me like he did in spaces of my dream state, and I
all but six, seven, or eight years old, plagued my images of death and dismemberment
and not knowing why. A cousin might have mentioned in some passing
story that they had heard of these mainstream killers, immortal, or paranormal
and attacking on a whim of teenagers, and unsuspecting baby sitters, for I surely
knew names of each of them, before I ever put their ski-mask, Shatner mask,
or burned face on concrete places inside my brain. My mother did not watch
those movies, my father once upon a time did, but even a cartoon tornado
touched down upon our property with intense feelings of dread as it sucked
up the house across the street, and nearly got us too, but my mother shooed
it away, and it took off afraid of motherly love.

When velociraptors were popular, in that movie franchise sense, I remember
having dreamed of them flocking into our church house, and decimating
everyone. And I did not know why my brain had preoccupations with death,
until I was much older. True crime was not a genre ever present in our house,
and scariest film I'd watched may have been melting faces, or hearts ripped out,
or extreme aging leaving only skeleton dust in whatever Indiana Jones movie I'd fancied,
but it wasn't that, it wasn't the murder of Marvin Acme pinned on Roger Rabbit,
and it wasn't a new batch of Gremlins, who both along with Indy had been my favorite
films for repeat viewing. Nor was it Flipper, where a younger Frodo Baggins
was chased and nearly eaten by a menacing hammerhead shark named Scar. But,
it could have been another Scar who tossed off his brother from cliff side,
so he could be king.

It wasn't though, not really, my preoccupation with death wasn't a product
of franchise dead teenager films, or archaeologist unearthing godly vengeance,
or natures wrath for being tampered with. Death permeated dreams of my childhood
because my first memory, that I could ever recall, haunted me to today, encoded
in my brain, like a tattoo, able to be occasionally covered up, but not when there was no chance
to control unconscious of that unlimited dream space. The dream comes to me,
regularly, waking up, small, nearly three, climbing off a bed made for giant,
so it seems to me, and I wander into living room, of a single wide, shag carpeted
trailer and see my mother in shock, talking calmly, an unmovable infant in her arms,
my older brother at her side, afraid, terrified, mortified, changed, and my father,
over there, in the kitchen, pacing and raging with tears, and that was where my preoccupation
came from. That invasion of death, on mind at most malleable.

And my mother, always survivor, taking me up as baby, when baby was gone. Me and her,
versus the world, against killers, and twisters, and dinosaurs, and monsters,
when all else was lost she'd be there to protect me. Holding me closer, me her baby boy
again, and she couldn't know impact on me now, my long-dependence on her to fix
it, to be stronghold in a life filled with invaders, a home to return to, and me always afraid
when it would fall, when death might overtake her, and how I might cope when ceiling
collapsed and my guardian and champion was no longer standing guard. Loss, is always
at the center of fears of separation, and lately my nightmares, when they come are of being
dumped, for some infraction I have committed. And those feel similar to death, levels of fear,
and horror on par, in the dream, to ax murders killing everything I hold dear.

Love, of family, of lover, not just of my mother, and significant other, but of brothers, and sister,
in-laws, and nieces and nephews, love is a shield against thoughts of killers lurking under my bed, with clawed hands, it keeps them at bay, but sometimes, often enough, nightmare is fueled,
and I am saved by reality, it's own scary premise, and I sigh, sigh deeply because, well, because
I have multiple strongholds in my life, from my mother, to my future wife.