I am trying out this challenge for April that's circulating on Tumblr - a month of prompts inspired by the poetry of the amazing Maya Angelou. The first prompt is "caged". The word “caged” is one I relate to closely. Kind of the stage of life I’m at right now since the divorce despite the steps I have taken forward to move on. I'm stuck. Stuck in the mundane. A routine. A mental illness. Needing a fresh start, desperately, but no idea how to go about it.
Anyway, here it is, for April 1st.
Caged
This town will enclose you
in brick walls of bitterness.
You can be free,
you can be bound,
but you will never
get out of here.
That highway stretches
into forever
but nothing here lasts as long.
There was I time when I’d run
too far to ever return
but I’d be crawling back,
wilted flowers in hair,
heart pieces falling
from frayed sleeves.
It’s not fair.
I had love.
I was as whimsical
as I ever wanted to be.
It was supposed to make me better,
not leave me alone,
bitter-hearted, jaded,
behind a cigarette
on another Friday night
at a bar I never liked anyway.
It folds knots within my stomach,
presses against these bones,
this hefty realization
I’m not the ragged drifter
I always fancied myself to be.
I’m another lost figure of a ghost
wandering these streets
forgotten.
I’m not a rebel.
I’m locked in.
And the bars are trembling
from all the years
I’ve wasted here
caged.
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