These phantoms crowd about <br />My lonely heart: <br />Their eyes are cold <br />But their embrace is warm – <br />Dread yet familiar ghosts. <br /> <br />Childhood. <br /> <br />Old men use such memories <br />To feed their fading fires— <br />But they are bitter to me. <br /> <br />The shadow of the slums <br />Is hardly shattered by <br />The mellow glow of Californian suns, <br />And the birdsongs <br />Are quite drowned by the <br />Distant rumbles of empty stomachs. <br /> <br />Mornings, then, <br />Were not the joyful sunbursts <br />Of pampered minds. <br /> <br />No. <br /> <br />There was no world outside <br />The grey, stained walls. <br />Our fathers saw their life, <br />Distorted, <br />Through the beer glass, <br />And we hunted for a rainbow <br />In the looming concrete slabs. <br /> <br />This bleak World was our prison, <br />But we hardly knew we were prisoners: <br />For there were no visions <br />In that sullen colony, <br />No Promised Land. <br /> <br />We accepted the shackles <br /> Of our fathers’ disease: <br />How could we fight for <br />What we never saw? <br /> <br />But we longed for beauty <br />With strange thirst: <br />Our eyes devoured <br />The rare green blade pushing <br />Through the black mud <br />Or the snatch of blue sky <br />Glimpsed through the <br />Scowling towers. <br />Of our Pauper’s’ Kingdom. <br /> <br />Love, too, <br />We longed for— <br />Not the shallow love of secure hearts, <br />But the steadfast, solid love <br />Of the loveless. <br /> <br />Other children play “mother and father”— <br />I was both to ragged brothers: <br />With hungry eyes, <br />We watched the sleek passers-by, <br />The lucky ones: <br /> <br />People who still believe <br />The World is a bright place: <br /> <br />For them, their happy childhood <br />Is the blanket to warm them on the stormy nights…. <br /> <br />I never had one.<br /><br />Ashley Akari<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/childhood-54/
