PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I’m sitting in a rusty red rocking chair in my beautiful barren and broken down bedroom

And I’m looking out of the fractured, foggy window

I see a squirrel

Walking on a telephone wire

Like it’s a tightrope

I’ve never once seen one of those little rodents lose their balance and fall



Let me paint the picture for you here…

It’s one of those colorblind dying December days

Snow is falling all around like catastrophic bombs over Baghdad

It’s so beautiful outside

But I’m trapped behind dozens of posters of my favorite bands and ripped wallpaper and a colorblind TV

I will never be able to leave my footprints in the freshly fallen snow

My mother comes in and tells me

“It’s one of those magnificent mornings to just stay inside and cuddle up with some hot cocoa and a book”

But all we have here is icicles

And yellow snow

And we don’t own any epic novels

We can’t even afford the newspaper

I’ve lived in a trailer park all my life

But now I feel like I’m caged and crammed in a claustrophobic cubicle more than ever

I feel like the mouse in a maze

Except there’s no cheese at the finish line

I feel like the last pawn left on a chessboard full of kings and queens

And there’s never a checkmate or a standstill

I feel like a turtle on its shell

I feel like an elephant in a zoo

I feel like a fly flying too close to the light

I feel like Holden Caulfield

I feel like a caged bird

Whose song for salvation no one ever hears

I feel like marionette

With no strings

I feel like a papercut

I feel like a squirrel

Who just lost all his acorns

I feel like a pauper

I feel like a murderer

I feel like a failure

I feel like a cripple

I feel like a statue

I feel like a scapegoat

I feel like…a boy



Here I am now hoping, just hoping that I don’t fall off of the tightrope in my head

This similar type of shit has left a lot of my fellow brothers as good as dead

My mother comes in again and tells me

“It’s one of those perfect days to just stay inside and put together puzzles or watch game shows or bust out old photo albums”

But I look up to her and plead

“Mom, there’s still missing pieces to the puzzle of our past, there’s still question marks at the end of all our sentences, our own relationship is a freaking game show…all the pictures in our photo albums have an X drawn over some man’s face with a beard”

I always assumed they were merely unfinished games of tic-tac-toe

But now I’m not so sure

I haven’t seen any O’s

And I haven’t seen any man with a beard at my house

Except for the mailman

Who delivered the letter

Saying “Congratulations, your son got accepted into Yale

But you’re too damn poor to ever afford even a single semester of his tuition”

Who delivered the package

With a key in it to escape out of this world

But who certainly did not

Deliver me like a stork onto this planet

I know for sure he’s not the man in those pictures

He does not have a big black X drawn across his face

But he tells my mother he loves her

And she puts a stamp on the upper right hand corner of his heart

Hoping it gets to its destination safely

I finally build up the courage to ask her who the X faced stranger is or was

And right at that moment

She hands me a cup of hot cocoa

And a copy of Catcher in the Rye

And simply shoves me beneath layers of bloodstained blankets

I accidentally drip the scorching fluid on my open scars

But I’ve even become numb to that now

A toxic tear spills from my eye into the cup

I take a sip of the pseudo poison and smile

For I’ve heard of several stories of surrender

But I’ve heard even more stories of salvation

But redemption is never resurrected for rope walkers

And rescue and recovery is never offered in broken homes

So I decide to try and put the scattered pieces back together myself

But as I pick my fractured past up from off the floor

My mother slaps me across the face and screams, “It’s one of those utopian evenings to draw kindergarten caricatures and put them up on the refrigerator”

But we don’t even own magnets

Or crayons

Or paper

So I build up the courage to tell her that this house has never felt like a home

And this room has always merely been my decrepit cage

I tell her that perhaps I would be better off in a circus

Dangling off of high wires like a monkey for everyone’s enjoyment

But she ships me to the door

And kicks my ass on the way out

And throws a shovel at my chest

But tells me not to go beyond the driveway

As she shuts the door

And closes the blind

I get a little curious

I see life beyond my mailbox

And other people shoveling their driveways

And other squirrels in other trees

So I decide to take the road less traveled by

And see for myself what’s beyond the horizon

Now I’m walking on thin ice

And an even thinner rope

I feel the earth starting to shake below my feet



...And right before I fell off the edge

A bearded man in a red hunting hat caught me

I wish I could have thanked him

Or at least seen his face

But all I remember was an X

And then somehow I was home again

Drinking hot cocoa

And making puzzles with my mother

And erasing unfishined tic-tac-toe games off of pictures

All merely in my mind...



I’m still sitting in a rusty red rocking chair in my bedroom

And I’m still looking out the window

I see a squirrel walking on a tree branch like it’s a tightrope

And as that squirrel somehow loses his balance and plummets from that tree

I wonder what it’s like to feel that free