Without Potential

© 1964 (Age 17)

I am a man without Potential
I've got none of that essential
STUFF to show the world.
I've no pride in all the Doings
that all men seem bent on strewing
o're this raged and ragged, stripped and staggered globe.

I've no Motive, nor the Taste
for just living life in Haste
as it seems we're all required to.
And in treatment of my Brethren
no examples seem as Reverent
as I'm told they are . . . . . and should be!

Wish I could charge down a Path
spewing love and venting rath
letting those I trample lick their wounds alone.
Then perhaps I'd give THEM hope
I'd be climbing up the laddar
towards the Virtues OTHERS value.

But, alas, I'm doomed to Caring
and my heart is chained to bearing
all the woes and harsh indignities of Man.
And my tongue gets tied for Trying
and I freeze for fear of Lying.
What if I, too, do not know the Truth?

Those who love me, my how Queer!
For they know not how they seer
my heart to blackened embers.
For they whisper that I'm Empty
when it's only I'm attempting
for a better reasoned way. Where's the way?

If I'm lost and I seem vacant
Truth is this: I am waiting
for a sign that those who teach me
actually know the Proper Pathway.
Doesn't look like it from here
when all I see is fear, selfishness
and contradictions everywhere.

Though you mean no pain, nor scorn me
you don't realize how you've torn me.
I am lost among your Ambiguities!

Written in high school, shocked at the conduct of our church minister who ran off with another man's wife; adults around me who didn't remotely live up to the loving Christian values they preached; and a variety of teachers who played favorites and seemed to enjoy humiliating, with impunity, the students they didn't like.