The Prisoner of Your Disregard

A poem

Alakazam!

Dear readers: my loss is your gain! Last year I was fortunate to place first in the formal poetry category of the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative contest. I hoped to make a strong showing this year, but at last year’s conference I was elected to the AWC board of directors. This renders me ineligible for the contest. Drat! But hey, I can share things with you rather than keep them under wraps until after the contest.

Of course, given the dire nature of the two images above, you may not be too happy about all this sharing.

Perhaps it’s a good thing I can’t enter the contest, for this year’s poetry contest (the free verse division, anyway) is unlike that of past years. This year, the free verse category is in memory of a beloved AWC board member who passed away right after last year’s conference. She loved cats, and so this year’s free verse poems must be on the subject of cats. I imagine it will be a very fluffy, lovey-dovey cat-fest all around, and so my gloomy poem would not only not fare well, it might actively disgust the judges. Luckily, they’ll never see it!

But you can…um…enjoy it right here and now.

The Prisoner of Your Disregard

Muffin—dear, dear Muffin—my feline burden:
I walked out of the dank, brutal building today.
No one was there to welcome me to the normal world,
But I don’t mind: the world itself is enough.
Sunlight, moonlight, wind, rain—these things may have their way with me.
You may not have your way, any more, for my sentence ended today.
You may wonder how a life sentence can end.
What parole board would release one condemned for all time?
What undeserved leniency is at play?
What perverse injustice would let one step out of
the cramped cell, once consigned?
It’s no mystery, but it is amazing.
I did not become a jailhouse lawyer and appeal my sentence.
There was no parole board.
There was no act of leniency.
There was no perversion of the law, somehow ruling in my favor.
There was none of that.
What happened was, long years into my sentence,
Standing at the door of my cell, tugging at the bars, begging for relief,
I finally thought to push, not pull, and,
(Miracle of miracles):
The door was not locked.
The door swung outward.
The door was not locked.
I stepped out, amazed, expecting shouts and alarms.
The door was not locked.
There were no shouts or alarms.
The door was not locked.
There were no guards.
The door was not locked.
I had made myself into a prisoner of your disregard,
Condemned by my wish for your love,
Condemned by my wish for the barest acknowledgment of my worth,
Condemned to value most that which was so casually withheld.
I stopped pulling and I pushed the door.
I pushed myself past the point of longing for your regard.
Freed, I shall see what else the world has for me.
I will still feed you, of course, but there my duty ends.

P.S. I’m just riffing on the alleged indifferent personalities of cats. I love our own cat, Nipsey Russell Toycen-Jones, who treats us with nothing but tender (and bitey and scratchy) affection.

Boing!