Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks March 2015: Identity | Page 8

I Have Been | I Am
Robert Galvin
I have suffered many the sapling tyrant, always
my tears washing away nothing.
I have been the child that knows why he can’t see his Dad.
Who knows full well what he’s done.
Why I’ll never be able to say I’m proud of him for anything.
I have flirted with flightful fancy of suicide,
Though I’ve never pressed down the razor or tied a noose.
My heart has often raced to the daydreams of violence,
Of stomping, kicking, killing,
until their bodies are sticky, pulpy paste beneath my foot.
I have cried myself to sleep in lustful loneliness,
whispering my lullaby, ‘Why?’
Yes, I have been the victim,
maybe call me an attention seeker;
But I I’ll be damned if I stay one.
I am a weirdo, a social borderliner,
but in that distance I have found the brightest of souls.
We are not lost;
We are right at home.
Victims?
Fuck that –
We’re survivors.

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