Notes About The Poem
This poem was written in response to a request from a friend. All he asked was that I write a poem with the title "The Perimeter." I hope he likes this one about the truth of where I live in my thoughts. It took years for me to understand and admit that I could not think like other people, that I was different. There came a time when I burned bridges and chose the freedom of the perimeter.
The Perimeter
THE PERIMETER
Leaning against the fence
that divides me from them,
I gaze outward into the
landscape I’m destined to roam.
Behind me, inside the fence,
are sounds of laughter and music,
sounds that don’t exist here,
sounds that never existed here.
I wish I didn’t hear the sounds.
Though I know it’s hopeless,
I turn and start climbing,
but it happens again like
so many times before.
I climb—the fence grows taller,
I climb again, it grows again.
I climb no more, it’s useless.
I can’t get in there, I never could.
I wish I knew the reason why.
Outside the fence, in the perimeter,
is where I’ll stay, obscene rabble
cruelly shunned by the insiders
proud in their narrow virtuous views.
Out here is lonely freedom—
freedom to think,
to feel,
to create,
to live,
unbound by fetters of respectability.
Out here is where I belong.
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