My smile looks like a dented Studebaker’s grill
from a bygone era; or more like the weathered picket fence
that poet Robert Frost never found the time to mend…
My nose has a hole from the cancer within
that could or would take the Hope diamond to fill; and the lump
on my head, it’s my twin…
People stare at me and wonder
how I’m still alive, or they ask me how long
my nose and head have been with child.
The little children cringe and with dirty fingers point,
knowing little if anything of a dead man walking, as their
mothers pull them by the hair or arms
safely out of my contaminated destination.
Police don’t give me traffic tickets
they recommend to the judge, house arrest…
believing when you are deformed
you are an unsafe driver and putting others at risk.
So today I’m waiting for the bus
to take me to my doctor’s place
In hopes that me and my family of diseases
can make it to that better day…

2008 © T Sheridan

Ted Sheridan

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/we-all-have-to-sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus-sometimes-in-order-to-get-to-where-we-re-going/