I crept through corridors
Crying as a kid
In the corruption of
Cusses and curses,
Cruel and cringeworthy
Comments carried on carelessly
As comedy from cunning clowns
Whose calculus capabilities
Calculated to nothing more than
Calamitous catastrophes.
And so, to cover up this calamity,
I became their casualty,
Caught up in a cross fire
Of uncultured and uncultivated contempt,
Considering themselves
Capable comedians
And casting me center court
As their callous words
Cut and crippled me,
Corroding the core
Into a clunk of inescapable
And incomprehensible confusions,
Casting a cloud on every class,
A crisis in every playground,
And causing countless
Creative excuses
For cutting school
And cowering
In the cowardice
Of my cursed
Conviction.

You frightened
The fuck out of this
Fellow you named faggot
For nothing more than fun
And festered no more in me
Than a fear for feelings
I was far too young
To figure or fathom,
Forcing me to fight
For a freedom I felt
I freely deserved
But fortune falsely favoured
Fools, back then,
The faculty of footballers
Whose fractions fired
Fantastical favouritism,
The fundamental flaw of the feeble,
And frowned on frail fairies
Who followed the rules
But failed to find
Firm footing
On the field.

I drifted
Through dark days
That dug their way
Into darker nights,
Where dreams drew you
As demons
Distastefully delegated
To degrade me,
Deflate me, detest me,
Depict me
As depraved
Despicable deviant.
I didn’t know
That I’d dared to be
That different
Though I thought myself,
Even then,
More deserving
Than the deluge
Of your devilishly displaced
Discrimination.

I wonder now
If you’ve been
Withered and wizened
By your wicked ways?
Have you watched the world
And witnessed it grow?
How is the grown-up now,
Grown up?
Grown gradually good,
Greater, grateful
Or just more greasy,
Grim and grotesque?

Do they still bark of your bravado
Behind the bikes sheds,
In the bar rooms,
At the ball games?

I am better now,
Brighter and braver,
Reborn from the bullied boy
You couldn’t break,
Built a backbone in spite of all your backlash.
I am better balanced now
And see your barbarian banter
As nothing more than beastly, base, banality.
I am beyond your belligerent beliefs now,
And have broken
From the blemishes
You bored into me,
Bored me with,
By your bigoted bitterness,
Through your blackened brutishness
And see the blasphemy
Not in how bent I was
But in the bloodthirsty bully
The boisterous brotherhood
Begged you to become.

I have since grown
And gained
In all the gaiety
That a graceful God
Once gave me
And I see now,
Nothing more,
Nothing much,
Nothing lasting
In the power
You once pretended to possess
over my Pride and your Prejudice.

Pity be the preposterous
For profanity perishes before it prevails.