What is your deepest fear, young man?

That you are inadequate?

Heading into “March Madness”, there’s no better time to (re)watch Coach Carter, but it got me thinking about one of the film’s central ideas: fear.

First of all, I can’t believe this film is nearly 20 years old goddamn!

There’s a question which high school basketball coach Ken Carter asks one of his players, Timo Cruz, on a number of occasions – What is your deepest fear? – to which Timo doesn’t really have an answer for until towards the end of the film where he recites a poem by Marianne Williamson in a rather eloquent manner. The whole scene is quite moving including what led up to it and is probably one of the most clipped parts of the movie.

However, I’m not here to do a film analysis, so let’s move on shall we?

I am here to do a poem of my own.

What is your deepest fear, young man?

That you are inadequate?

Forgettable,

Like a seven-footer who can’t dunk

A bona fide scrub

An unremarkable punk

Consigned to the pages of history,

But written in invisible ink

Put in with the foundations yet,

An ol factory stink

Shot down in a blaze of glory

It’s laughable you’d get paid to think

Deep fears

Into the abyss, headfirst

Mariana trench

Unable to quench your thirst

Lost, left to rot for a long time

Just imagine the stench

Give up, go home

You’re not going to win

You’re not built for success

The deck is stacked against you

Sometimes you get kicked!

In excess

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world”

And yet we have to

To appease the insecure and immature

And way down we go

Why can’t we fertilise with a different manure?

In a race to the bottom does humanity row

Lost in the desert

Dunes are the mind-killer

An oasis of logic and reason

To a mad man’s rants and indecipherable filler

Is it all completely hopeless?

What a waste of time life is meaningless

A society bent on safety and security

Won’t allow fears to be liberated

It’s bad for business

A fearful populace

Easier to manipulate and control

Psychologically ‘twill take its toll

A managed reality

Being told to forget what we know

Turning away from stupidity

Before it’s nuclear winter in the snow

How long? Not far…

‘Til we forget who we are