It has been a week and a few decades
memories impossible to erase of years
when a child, he worked the land in the
wake of a father who rarely played.
He recalls the ball games in tennis shoes
when he dreamed of the cleats his mates
boasted with the pride of a Pélé, while
they ran with the skills of a blind man.
The kid had so many hopes to be
just like the others in the village,
riding a three-speed bicycle to the woods
not the rusty wheels he assembled alone.
All the years he might have a vague memory
of the moment when none reminded him that
he too could have celebrated a birthday
if they had the time to remember his joy.
Christmases and New Years too
disappeared with little more than
an orange and a few chocolate candies
images in the mist and nothing left.
So many gifts never received, hugs never granted
memories with holes aplenty in a full world
where he saw so many smile at the presents
he would never know in a forgotten childhood
Fabrice Poussin
Saragun Springs 
Fabrice, this verse might have been written about my dad, growing up painfully poor a hundred years ago during the Great Depression. It might well stand in for those estranged and forgotten children, anytime, any place, who had to make due with fakes and pretend riches and thoughtlessness in lieu of real consideration and love. Your poem touched me. Thank you.
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Fabrice
This is the haunted ballad so many kids face. Only a very few ever gain fame and most learn it isn’t what it looks like. Still, we all should have a childhood worth looking back at.
Leila
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Fabrice
Life teaches us many lessons and it teaches us many lessons in many different ways. We probably learn more from the pain than we do from the pleasure. The things we wanted but couldn’t have are our teachers. Hemingway called it “stronger at the broken places,” meaning that when life doesn’t turn out the way one planned, which is most of the time, that is a gift and a message from the Universe which it is up to us to interpret and make something of, instead of whining and crying and complaining about it. Everyone is holy and everyone is great. One needn’t be famous or wealthy to be and become important and meaningful. Our Consumer Society (which is almost global now) tells us massive lies and it starts when we’re still in the cradle. We are all important and meaningful, yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever, and yet this society proclaims that one is somehow a lesser entity if one isn’t rich and famous, as if only the good people become rich and famous and the rest of us are trash, when it’s usually the reverse, in fact.
Your honest and authentic poetry explores raw human feelings and states of mind that most people are afraid to talk about. Great job!
Dale
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“The haves and the have nots” so poetically and clearly defined. I thought this was a funny line, “they ran with the skills of a blind man.” A lot of good lines. There’s an emptiness that was beautifully created.
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