It owned you, though you never had a choice,

from your birth, bound to poverty by chain,

in the grip of deprivation and lack.

In such hardened bondage you were a slave,

devoid of honesty and deep sorrow,

possessing only dreams until those too were gone.

A dreamer, always dreaming more, then gone

with an empty hand and vacant sorrow

to your next hollow adventure, to lack

the wear withal and honesty of choice,

with a broken father inside the chain

continuing the cycle of the slave.

Captive as dark and black as any slave,

tied to empty hope, all shattered and gone.

Began your journey but with little choice,

save flattening the path of want and sorrow,

always hiding your badge and knotted chain.

Mandela of the honesty you lacked.

Did you hide your shame at your inner lack,

trying with intent and intimate choice

but then wavering until all was gone.

When did you earn the right to be a slave,

and divorce obligation to your chain

with little regret and benign sorrow?

Your lot, to carry the meat man’s burden,

your chance to be the big fish now all gone

at thirteen, languishing like a beat up slave,

shrunken and unsteady, filled with the deficit

of feeling, ashamed with your loss of choice.

welded to a life of unaltered chain.

Your helpless father failed to break the chain.

The old timer, old timer ways, now gone.

Someone loved you once, but you drank the sorrow

down at forty four, the better life you lacked.

Searched for the greener grass, but died a slave,

a soul lost in death, an unwelcome choice.

A slave to a bond you could not understand or break.

What is the mystery that possessed you,

to take so much less than you could have had.