Poem: "The Scapemare"

Whee, another donation, another poem! This one came out of the February 2, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl. It was sponsored by a prompt from minor_architect and sponsored by allykat. I liked the idea of someone dreaming nightmares to keep them from manifesting, but then I was faced with something like "the problem of evil" so I had to explain why there are still some nightmarish things in the world...

I am the one who saves the world
every night, without fail.

I am the nightmare scapegoat
and no one knows my name,
but everyone owes me their lives.

I swallow your horrors
so that you may sleep in peace.
I have swallowed nuclear wars and plagues,
rapes and dismemberments, failures and absurdities.

You may call me insane,
but say to you: I am the scapemare,
and the only nightmares that escape me
are the ones I am dreaming
when you wake me up.