by Tom Ashley
The familiarity of it all is too easy.
It must be like those born without
without limbs, without eyes,
with wrong skin, with wrong height
with wrong schools and neighborhoods
It’s familiar places we find ourselves
in but familiar can be dark and sad
crushing, humiliating in its touch
controlling the dials as ghosts do the work
in fields of the mind and its memories,
But it’s of wrong messages I wish
to speak and do so in harsh tones
to scold those who were ever
mean to those little ones who
had a long and lasting road to travel
It’s late in this game clocks whisper to me
pictures are beginning to fade
people have gone missing, good ones too,
please not the one drinking the essence with me.
only fools cut out their hearts and live on
I have infinite gratitude to the fabulous Sarah White and my classmates who nurtured the imagery, passion, pleasure, emotion, insight and the gift of a lifetime I found in poetry.