Writer’s Poem: Fear

Today’s poem talks about the murder of a harmless spider. I don’t know whats it with poets and the killing of insects. Charles Lamb also wrote a poem (thoughtless cruelty) which was about killing a fly. But I digress. In this poem, Nikki Giovanni briefly contemplates the logic behind her killing of a spider who did nothing to her, except that she was frightened of it. Is her fear a valid reason to cause harm to it.

A lot of people have used this poem to talk about the happenings of today, especially, the killings of black people by some white cops based on the irrational reason of fear. They feared the black person and they shot the black person. Ridiculous, I know, but it happens, sadly. Let me know what you think about the poem below.

Allowables by Nikki Giovanni

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

On to today’s question. Tam asks: What was the inspiration behind randoms by a random?

Haha I’ve actually answered this question before. But here goes again, there was zero inspiration behind this blog. Like, I don’t even know why I started the blog in the first place, but it most definitely was not supposed to be a poetry or a mental health blog, which it is now. I think I just wanted to try my hands in so many things, inspirational writes ups and other random things. I wanted to experiment, and hence its random name “Randoms by a random”. I really need to get a better name.

I hope that answers the question. Thank you Tam.