Life for them. This Is Not Mine

A piece about the place I call home. I don't hate the place, I just get fed up with some of the people here.

Life For Them, This Is Not Mine
A reflective poem by James Horsley

It’s nineteen-thirty in two thousand seven
The county fair is the years biggest event

They work the fields all day on tractors
Loggers fell trees on the hillside
The ambitious ones make their living at the train yard
                               And this is life, so they say

Twice a week they gather in a little white church
Maybe five of them have ever read the Bible
                                  The other eight of them
Only know what passages to throw at blasphemers
Only there because this is what mommy and daddy believed
So they must too, no time to figure it out for yourself
Jesus is coming back Tuesday; didn’t you know?

A new generation wants more
At least the ones who can think for themselves
But they are looked down on, even feared
There’s no room for the artist here, or the free thinker
For that you must leave,
And that is simply impossible
“It’s only a phase, you’re just a kid.
And someday you will grow out of it and work at the railroad.”

They sit on the porch all day, just rocking
No ambition
              Any of them
Here not because it’s what they wanted
             But all they dared to know
And this is life, so they say
 

Reviews

[Makayla]

This is really good poem.
And all of this true out here also. =]