I grew up

With chocolate coated Cocoa Puff dreams

of happily ever after,

And I believed it.

When I grew up,

There was no war.

We stood by

little wooden chairs

and said

I pledge allegiance

to the flag of Gods Blessed America,

And I believed it

When I grew up,

The West Was Wild,

And John Wayne was the ruler.

Evil never won,

And I believed it.

When I grew up,

The Marines flew through the air

like diving acrobatic swallows

with bumble bees that carried honey

to their hives

preparing for, I guess,

winter,

And I believed it.

When I grew up,

My sisters and me

climbed trees and low crawled

through ditches

to get a better aim

with rifle sticks

designed to

take out horsepower driven Indians,

And I believed it.

When I grew up,

The belt was for my own good,

and mama had to do it to teach me a lesson,

And I believed it.

When I grew up,

I got a baby in my sixteen-year-old belly

by a boy that I thought was a man,

that was miscarried away,

and we were all better off,

cause only God knows what's best,

And I believed it.

As I grew up,

I began to see

the happily ever after

did not mean ivory towers

and prince charming,

and that the pledge of allegiance

made me the wooden chair,

and John Wayne was an actor

with cancer eating at his suffering soul

and that good almost never wins.

When I was older

The diving swallows became bombers

and the bumble bees

were carrying guns and vehicles

necessary for defense

against the atom bomb

that at any moment

could eat into God's blessed America

like John Wayne's cancer.

As time went on,

I saw four little girls climbing

towers of tears

low crawling through ditches

of pain and anger

with no ammunition

for pretection

and that the belt gave a beating

and mama still thinks

it was the right thing to do,

and that the boy was a boy

and the baby was batter off there

wherever that was

cause here is hell,

and the enemy is my neighbor

and worst of all me.

Nobody prepared me

for the real

they stacked me on a shelf

in a censored library

where the very toold

that were designed to teach were

always just out of my reach

forcing me to face

a firing squad of nonfictitious reality.

*Contrast is extremely apologetic for having misplaced this writer’s last name – if you know, please tell us, and we’ll correct it here.