Kicking. Screaming. I tried, I swear,
With little care to hide despair.
As closer, closer towards the light,
The start of what they call 'life'.
Clutching, grabbing.
I lose my final hold.
As Wrenched out screaming I enter the cold.
Where a coated man pronounces 'four ounces six pounds',
While the sobs of happiness are drowned out by my desperate sounds,
Pleading, pleading.
They show no remorse.

And so the pages of my first few years,
Flick before my eyes still red with tears.
Silenced, I'm unable to communicate,
As the meaning of life I still debate.
The answer to which I never discover.
Not me, not them or any other,
Can decipher life's great cryptic cover.
Or enter its gilded pages.

One. Two. Three.
The ornamental cake reveals another turn.
Four.
But is it true, am I still alive?
As I lay incapable, limbs acting of their own control,
Attached to a harness like a thief on parole.
But they don't care,
As it seems too much to bear,
And as I wail my grievances,
To my silent confidant, the moon.

The others, they seem happy, full of glee.
But no, no. That's just not me.
I never wore those bright striped suits,
Or dressed up in those 'cute' red boots.
I wouldn’t, I wont.
I'm not the rest,
Not setting out to be the best.
Head arched over, down to the ground,
That free life spirit yet to be found.

To the moon I ask 'what can I do',
But all he does is stare straight through,
Casting down his pure white waves,
That somewhere nowhere reflect off a bespoke grave.

I never swung upon the swings,
Or experienced the joy it apparently brings.
I never found my feet in summer waters,
Or skimmed some brilliant stone like a deadly mortar.
I never tumbled on grasses lush green,
Or ventured my mind to places never seen.
I never laughed at brainless words,
My fathers voice I never heard.
Just the sounds of sobbing,
Over a vacant face that never returned.

I started school for all my sins,
And took full force of all it brings,
Barely looking up from my comrade pavement,
I never saw the friendly glance never stared,
Or ever took ear to the cheery greeting never spoken.

I never joined the playground show,
Always hiding myself in the back row.
Never ask, never answer.
Forever screaming, never speaking.
Pen in hand I scribble idle nothings,
As quickly forgotten as they are preached.

My childhood drew on in painstaking years,
Confirming all my many fears,
As the pain of growing up scolded deep,
Gouging cracks from which remaining hope seeped,
Replaced by bitter resentment and fear,
And a yearning for an ending to loom near.

I read the morning paper in the hope of reading my own obituary,
But no such luck.
Just the tainted ink subliminally telling victims that bullets speak louder than words,
Its headlines screaming prophesies of the beginning of the end,
And the destruction of the world.

The others, they looked down on me,
But they didn’t see what I could see,
The pain. The torment. The despair.
They didn’t listen. They didn’t care.
But I knew truth. I knew.

I knew.

Dan Cooper. 2005