Second Childhood Poem by RIC BASTASA

and then the children
come to you and you cannot tell
who was it that
you have carried in your arms
a long, a long
time ago, for now they have changed
faces, most
of them have lost the pink luster
of love
and innocence and you shy away
from each
whose thoughts are no longer the same as yours
and you are caught in this
paranoia
that they are here finally to dislodge you
in this overcrowded
face of the
earth and so this is what is
happening next,
to escape from their
wrath
you go back to being a child again
relearning
the art of innocence
via those self-made diseases
those pretensions
of youth
unlimited