Normal Redefined

For a period of time during the year, the #GRPG collaborated on several photo prompts, most put forward by our resident Welsh Dragoness, Shan Ellis Williams, but this is one that I found! The offerings from the others in the group can still be found here. Enjoy their very worthy contributions to the poetry of this prompt.

I walked to the post box yesterday
and ran late for a bus,
marched around the dance floor
to my favourite tune

Hopping between the paving stones
avoiding the cracks between.
It was to feed the ritual neurosis,
which possessed me.

Hating the fact that clever Dick
was stepping on my shadow,
he seemed to tick my every move
as a credit on his list.

Bemoaning that I had a job
that wasn’t my paradigm.
Envious of those who always seemed
to set about life with fire.

Then, one good day, I arrived,
but where?
My brain and arms and legs
all there.
Good health and wealth,
but all for what?
My heart and soul and spirit
…completely lost.

We strive so long for all of life
achieving little honour.
Conforming to a cultural norm,
imprinted in our genes.

If only I had noticed the colours
were, like old grey tombstones,
dusty, jaded, black and white,
until just now, when I awoke
to find a stage that used to be
kept way out of sight
or in another universe,
in some other back yard,
hidden from public view.

There, dancing to an unknown tune,
I winced and cringed to see
the limbless, challenged freaks perform
…but, at once, I wished I was as free.

Oh, liberate me from biassed eyes
and all the lies that ‘liberty’ denies.
It isn’t they who are deformed,
but through a filtered view of me,
they have now broken through to be

…normal redefined.

© 2012 John Anstie