Edges

Friday night
exploring places people congregate
discovering always the boundaries
boundaries of waste lands
too painful to cross

at the edges
painful edges
clickes and cliche, slicing and slashing
at everyone's desire
only to meld, only to belong

watching life at the edges
barbed razor wire shredding grasping hands
keeping back the onlookers
at the edges

to try, to pass
means to bleed
for some humor hides the hurt
for some humor slides past barbed wire
while others use sarcastic bombastic siege
attempting to create openings
at the edges

To belong means to endure
means losing one identity, in order to gain another.
Is it worth the slashing of entry?

Walking away from the edges
to go home
to sleep in the center, of being alone
is far better
than living at these edges
or to pass thru into the muddled middle prattling
of being something else

To go home, alone
starts the trip thru the edges
of being in the center
of being yourself

--------------------------------------------
Casey Kochmer: October 2003


Wrote this after watching how hard it is to try to belong to groups of people, and the walls put up between each other.