This is a poem by Stephen Wish. If you would like to have some of your own work published here, please contact Stephen to discuss the possibility


SHADOWS

To you we are just shadows on a wall
The cracks in a pavement
Sometimes when we look at ourselves
We are just ghosts in a mirror
We are the excluded

We are the ones to blame for your failures
We cause your mistakes
If only we didn’t exist, you protest,
None of this would have happened
We are the excluded

We are the ones you ignore, despise, hate
We are the ones you shut outside
We are somebody else’s problem
Anyway, we must deserve it
We are the excluded

We are beneath your conscience
Beneath your contempt and beneath your feet
We are everybody’s burden
The reflection of your sins
We are the excluded

We are the worthless that you have to pay for
That you don’t listen to or hear when we weep
We are the shadows on your walls
The cracks in your pavements
We are the excluded

We are the nuisance you strive to avoid
The itch you cannot scratch
The ache in your head
If only a pill would make us go away
We are the excluded

We are the lost and the lonely
The hurt and the hunted
And sometimes when we look in a mirror
We see only a ghost
We are the excluded

We are the wounded and injured by you
As you stub your cigarettes out on our skin
Your dog shits at our feet
We couldn’t live next door to you
We are the excluded

We are the not even have-nots
We are the pause at the end of the silence
The gum under the table
We are what the street cleaners leave behind
We are the excluded

You wouldn’t even sweep us under your carpet
You call the exterminator in
Tut tut, there should be a law (there is)
And sometimes our mirrors show us only ghosts
We are the excluded

Stephen Wish (13.6.03)

Mostly written in the sunshine in the grounds of Canning Crescent waiting to see my psychiatrist.

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