Time Warped Views.
Updated on January 22, 2010
Time Warped Views.
My prison was the projects,
they called them Briardale,
as if we were burrs
that needed removing,
30 some kids per block,
socks for gloves,
and salvation army
hand-me-downs,
water on our cereal
cause there was
never enough milk,
and liver and onions
served often,
cause it was
20 cents a pound.
I chewed my way through
two bedposts and
three windowsills,
just to get a
taste of something
other then poverty.
We were set dead center
in the middle of
suburban bungalows,
where the better
off kids lived,
who weren't allowed
to hang with us,
but most of the
more fortunate guys
spent their free time
copping truly cheap feels,
from the project girls,
and the girls loved the gangers,
the sense of danger,
and rebellion they emitted
was like a musk wetting
well-to-do libidos.
I spent much of my life
dreaming, writing poetry
of far off places I'd never seen,
wishing I was somewhere else,
till the draft became my genie,
and I began wishing I was back
in that humble hovel I once despised.
Now it's a golf course,
and the ninth hole is
where my house used to be,
and childhood is but
an elusive memory,
yet I find myself
willing to give up anything
to spend one week
back in that place,
where the girl next door,
set my heart jackhammering,
and the whap of a stick ball
got my once nimble feet
dancing over garbage
can lid bases.
Now I live in the
luxury of an adult hood,
with endless stimulation
and plenty to spend,
but I know so few
of the joys of not having
yet truly being delighted
with what little there was.
©-MFB III