When I Was A Boy

I used to think everything would be easy,
when I was a boy. I'd play with my thoughts

and write my journals, picturing the great
poet I'd be, I'd be. I'd fantasize and create

endless illusionary worlds where everybody
talked nice to everybody else. Where every

waking up represented a glorious new day.
Of course, this is not how it is, it is. It is not

the shape or colour of my living. There's
a marriage to surrender and kids to control.

There's bills and working and slowly conforming
to the very ideologies I spat upon when

I was a boy. There's tension and worries,
frustrations and disagreements. Mistrust

and lies. Oh yes, there are lies! They have
always lied to me, who-ever "they" are. Telling

me fitting in and belonging was more to be
embraced than thinking for myself. I've sat

in their schools and studied their books.
Obeyed their stop signs and overlooked

their arrogance. Pushed to be all I could
be, when in truth it was all that they

wanted me to be. When I was a boy I'd
play with my friends. We'd journey to every

corner of history never leaving our
neighbourhood. There were ice cream trucks

in those days. Not those silly bicycles
I see now, but actual trucks. The same sort of

trucks delivered dairy products to our door,
our door. But those trucks are gone and so

are my friends. One or two I still see, yes that
is true, but if truth must be spoken they

are not what they were before. And neither
am I, you see, you see. I'm confused and

confusing, rambling and dangling impossible
weights upon a soul. The day will come, perhaps,

when the dying begins. How old will I be?
How much will I have conformed by that

point in time? Cliches and fantasies, mud
and dirt, these are my friends now. When

I was a boy, a boy. Yes, when I was a boy,
what a world it was at that time!