I kept telling them
I’m happy
but for whatever reason
the impression given
was not.
Happy.

So they kept worrying
and asking
so finally I admitted that
I Don’t Know!
i don’t know i don’t know
how I’m feeling
I know that my person
is a happy, free-spirited living person
but my situation
for that very reason
limited by my surroundings
oppressed by my authorities.

I am a happy person
in an unhappy life
and my despair
over the unachieved
potential enjoyment of life
must have begun to show
because they couldn’t stop asking
what was wrong

and what is wrong
it is them,
not them personally
I like some of them,
a few are good friends,
but it is their
society
the standards there
of
that are wrong
that wrong me.

When I was on 72nd street
walking in the dark
in my dirty neon-green jacket
searching for a path to take
and shining my newly-acquired aura
of depression and oppression,

A homeless lady approached me,
while I was using a pay phone
making an unsuccessful call
she interrupted the disconnection
to say hi, and,
even before she asked me to spare a dime
(what was surely on her mind)
she asked, genuinely caring,
if I was alright.

I said yes,
not wanting to burden her with my confusion
and she asked me for her dime
so I gave a quarter,
and she put her arm around me
and told me I was a beautiful person.

She walked me to a restaurant window,
insisting to show me,
two blonde toddlers
dining with their parents.

"That’s just what you looked like
when you were little,"
she told me,
as we remembered
innocence

together.

"Yeah, that’s just like it was like,"
I said,
and I am no longer innocent
I know this world all too well
but if I still have beauty
and wonder
of childhood
along with knowledge
growth and change
in my maturity
then I can be free
in my soul.

Those kids have many years to live
many years to learn
they will give they will earn
love and freedom.

I remembered
innocence
with a homeless lady today
when she asked me
if I was okay

And I’m doing okay, yeah
if I still have ties
to my roots
and am unbound
by suits

and I’m living alright, yeah
if I can go out at night
and walk the street
and come to meet
myself and others
sisters and brothers
children and adults
who are both.