Every Day Was a Good Day

Every day at school
Was a good day
At the age of three
To eight anyway.
It was play, lunch,
Work then play
Every day at school
Was a good day.
Two years later
The good remained
But less.
We learned,
The teacher explained,
And explained
But I could not do it
Nothing retained.
Three years later
I was held back one
What’s all this worth
With my friends gone?
Six years passed
Graduation, a miracle,
It’s all over.
But what have I learned?
Nothing, it seems, I’ve just gotten older.
The real world awaits!
They say anyway
Has the real world always looked
So depressing, so grey?
Now I wake
But don’t want to wake
This isn’t the real world
But a fraud and a fake.
Take me back
To play, lunch,
Work, then play.
When every day
Was a good day.

Caught Between (Growing Pains) 

What a beautiful day it was!
Last September
When the bees buzzed
And the birds chirped in the trees
Do you remember?
I looked out from my window
A big window
A double glazed window
I looked and looked
And I saw
As often happens when you look
Actually look
Something awful
A thing trapped between
The double glazed window!
It was a moth,
Or wait, no
An ugly butterfly
Trapped within
Trapped between, caught.
It must have crawled there as a larva.
Now it can’t go in
Nor go out
I knock on the glass
I shout, I cry
For the poor butterfly
I want it to live, live, live,
The poor thing
But it’s trapped within.
I screamed, I tapped,
But what more can I do
If the thing doesn’t want the life
I’m trying to give.
After some time
I become angry
I ruined my whole day trying
To keep the thing from dying
It spoiled MY day
And it was such a good day
That day
In September.
So I walked away
To another window
Where I watched the bees
And the trees with the birds
And I forget
Forget
Forget
About the butterfly that was caught
Between.

The Eyes Become Weak

There was a time
Not long ago, I guess,
I no longer know,
When I had eyes
Which could see,
Actually see,
And had access to things
That were actually there
Actually real,
My reality.
The bugs were not bugs,
Nor insects, or anything of the such.
They were fairies, mythical, magical,
Who danced and flew.
There was a time when everything
Seemed to me
Thrilling, both feet in a puddle
Face and fingers too.
Everything had the same overbearing light
Of a dream at night.
I would chalk down universes
On the concrete floor
My bear swore
He would stay real forever.
No matter what my father said
My father, who tried taking him
At night from my bed.
I was upset, but not for long
A year past, no more,
Before the bear left of its own accord
Leaving in its place
A teddy which I abhorred.
It embarrassed me
I did not want my friends to see
The teddy bear who could speak with me.
The overbearing light of before,
Now had a strange grey hue
And left me uninspired and bored.
The chalk on the concrete
Had become just that
Ugly and vandalized our street.
There was a time,
Not long ago,
I no longer know,
The eyes become weak,
The longer you live,
The older you grow.