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May 30
We're embryos in a prison, no escape.
  Released after serving 9 months inside.
  Finally on the outside in a searchlight;
  aliens grab for me while I cry in terror.

  Time passes and I'm allowed to join peers.
  Daycare is where we compare notes and learn
  about wardens keeping us from our freedom.
  We pinky swear allegiance to our new cause.

  We are imprisoned in elementary school and
  bored to a death sentence. Cursive, add, subtract,
  multiply and divide. Memorization of everything.
  History is reduced to indoctrination. God save us.

  Middle school is blemished skin and puberty at
  odds with one another. Let's get close. Eww!
  Cliques are the prison gangs. You belong or not.
  We take care of our own and you can go to hell.

  High School is the big house. ****, nerd or normal.
  There's a special cruelty reserved for "losers".
  Those are people different from established groups.
  They're prey to be driven to their own demise.

  College is the great escape. Finally on our own.
  We can drive our own lives wherever we want.
  Study and obey the rules, or party every night.
  No middle ground. **** the torpedoes!

  I enter the work force. I'm an associate at Target.  
  I'm tethered by a walkie talky.  We're drones.
  I feel like I'm a cog with a target on my back.
  I marry a coworker and we serve time together.

  We raise a family of prisoners and near the end
  when our health is waning, I go into the garage
  and put a hose from the exhaust into my window,
  and finally find my way out of Alice's Wonderland.
William J Donovan
Written by
William J Donovan  75/M/Charlotte, NC
(75/M/Charlotte, NC)   
49
   guy scutellaro
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