Panic

On average our hearts beat from 60 to 100 times a minute.
That is of course, when you aren’t going around being a person:
Spotting someone attractive, walking, laughing or panicking.
Not five minutes of 100 beats but a trillion butterflies
or panicked wasps that try to escape your mouth during a speech.

80BMP
That’s not your heart in your throat as you talk
but the wasps showing through shaky buzzing hands,
clasping the script you slaved over for half a year.
But those aren’t your hands:
You can’t even move a finger.

90BPM

It’s not butterflies on our stomach they would just tickle
Wasps sting and make it hard to breathe
Like that medieval torture method
Where they forced a rat to escape it’s own demons
Through your stomach.

100 BPM

Like the audience imagining YOU in naked
Cue cards too small to hide behind
and the only thing you can focus on
Is this rat burrowing deeper into your stomach
Scratching in it’s own panic to flee the fire

90 BMP

But you can’t escape the fire
with its burning judgemental eyes
the only way to beat it
Is with your own
Meet their eyes and burn holes in their hearts

80BPM

Leave a searing impression on your audience
Let the wasps free to imbed your points with their own
No nerves for the rats to gnaw on; they plague the audience your view.
A confident clasp on an unneeded script to conclude with a smirk;
“Thank you for listening”

70 BPM