Category: Writers Block
POCKETS:
A PROSE POEM
(Note: this poem was written for a different time and place. It is written for a time during the late fifties when cokes were a nickle a piece, and schools for the blind were not what they are today. In short, it was written for a childhood of my time, so please excuse the excursion into unreality, sort of? Though this is not autobiographical, it did happen to a good friend of mine. It affected me so much that I wrote this poem.)
For an eleven year old, pockets are for treasures: a rock, a dried leaf, baseball cardss, and gum wrappers. They are treasures of the mind: the rock a gold nudget, the dried leaf, a secret map to the whereabouts of the beautiful princess, the baseball card, the man the boy should be, and the gum wrapper, a reminder of the flavor of ment.
The boy’s father used to give him a roll of nickles when he visited home from the boarding school. “A whole roll of nickles” twenty cokes or candy bars, economic power among his friends, purchasing power amongst the bullies, and pride in his father that the man was so powerful to give out such wealth that said “I love you”, though his father never did. He was not that kind, but the nickles said it for him. And the nickles went most lovingly in to the secret pocket.
Pockets are for secrets too. The secret way the teacher put his hand in the boy’s pocket to touch him in forbidden places, and give him forbidden pleasures. But pockets are not so good at hiding their secrets.
Pockets are for mending. The boy’s mother working with needle and thread to undo the teacher’s wrong; but the wrong is not in the pocket, it is just a pocket. The wrong is in the boy’s soul, where he silently cries at night: no longer deserving the rock, the dried leaf, the taste of ment, the baseball card, and especially heart breaking, his father’s love.
Wow! A very powerful dark work I like the way it works, the way it leads you into a shock without warning is masterful
I concur. that was an excellent yet dark work and it shocked me as well. wow
I fear most of my stuff is "work in the dark", boooo!
Groan! Smile
wow...very moving and powerful...
many of my works are dark and dreerie so don't worry. and dark and dreerie is often what some need to hear to take notice.