Please stop saying Sorry [poem]
I’m wond-er-ing who made you feel
you have to say “I’m sorry”
almost every time you speak?
Who almost crushed you so
the sparkle from your eyes
and roseness of your cheeks
were wiped away? In other words,
who is it that decided it is better
that your personality be weak
so he could minimise your flow,
keep you in your place & thereby
curb your spirit — exercise control?
Who is this man (who is no man) —
this freak of nature who would
rather you were less than you can be,
who puts you down in order to
supposedly preserve his sanity,
yet has no care for yours?
And then, within my vivid brain,
I saw a sepia image of a tiny kid
who underneath a broken sofa hid.
His mum was yelling out his name
while pacing round the room.
A belt with buckle in her hand she held.
On the radio a crazy tune was heard.
“You’ll do as you are told!” she yelled.
And then the little boy emerged
who meekly weakly let himself be hit
as mother said: “You will submit.
Now, have you understood?”
To which he said “I’m sorry, I’ll be good”.
And so that little boy became a man
and fell in love (or so he thought)
and then a carbon copy of his
treatment by his mum began
to be applied by him upon his wife
who quickly learned to say:
“I’m sorry, I’ll be good. I’ll now
behave just as you think I should”.
And then he had regained (he thought)
the lost control which, in his early life,
had made him weak and thus defined
his later role. So this was just a little peek
at how the bag of bones and rotten flesh
gets passed from 1 generation to the next.
The moral of the story here is this:
Please jettison your baggage
ere you treat your lovers, children,
spouses, just as you were treated
long ago by those who should have
loved you well but chose instead
to make your little life a living hell.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2017
The Naked Troubadour 