The Best Years

I lie screaming in Ashford Crescent,
ripped from the breast of the family.
They come in a white mini-bus,
peel me up, carry me off.
I am dislocated, lost in empty corridors,
which shoeless I wander in nightmares.

As in a dream I grope
half blind with right eye patched,
my left eye stumbles lazily.
I am lost in a ghostly cloakroom,
haunted by hanging coats,
deserted by my own.

Children come in groups: two or three,
chatting and skipping, they play:
Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy.
On this planet I am the alien,
ignorant, unable to teleport
beyond the force field of bedtime.

Now I am lost in the labyrinth,
a teacher rearing on hind legs,
wielding chalk, spitting strange symbols.
I am cornered in my ignorance,
have lost the rescuing thread of Theseus.
Dumbly I meet my sacrifice.

I learn my lessons:
hide, do not be noticed;
curl up as a pea;
do not trust the pod.
If I do not ask for anything
nothing is ever refused.

Friends, if I have them;
traitors who betray me
to names they sharpen
and slip between my ribs,
barbed with the poison of rejection,
more bitter than the bloody nose.

Now I have become my own worst enemy,
an expert in pre-emptive self mockery.
Their weapons I take,
and blunt them on my soul.
I build walls and walls within walls;
and without knowing I become the labyrinth.