Unwanted

They come back and stand in our midst,
nightmarish images descended from torment
awoken suddenly by the night’s alluring call.

Unwelcomed, they are fearsome presences,
specters lurking in the recesses of our dreams
haunting us persistently, uninvited but loath to leave.










Unwanted is the product of an assignment for my creative writing course. Our professor had us choose the first line of a poem, use it as our first line, then continue writing our own poem. I wanted to give credit to the poet who wrote the poem I chose to use. David Young wrote, “They come back and stand in our midst” which is from his poem "The Dead from Iraq" published in The Best American Poetry 2008 on page 142. It was these words, which inspired me to write Unwanted.