Welcome To My Hometown Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

Has anyone ever tried,
To tell you the kind of childhood you had?
Or the environment you spent,
Your yourthful days in...
As if you were on on tour,
And they were explaining it?

Has anyone ever told you,
About those grade schools you attended.
With an embelishment done,
As if you were on the sidelines...
Looking on for fun.
And they attempted to tell you,
About those teachers who taught...
And you seldom saw them in a classroom at all?

Welcome to my hometown.
Where any visitor who comes,
Would think what took place...
Was straight from a portrait painted,
By Normon Rockwell.

Welcome to my hometown.
Where actual events can be erased,
With a replacing of the truth...
To conveniently be mentally innovated,
For the sake of giving it a different face.

I had been often told how my parents were,
When they were raising me.
What they did and how I responded.
As if I had lost all memory.

I even had been told what I did with friends.
And what apartments they lived in.
While as a child growing up in the projects...
I would listen to these tales,
And wondered where I was when the teller of this...
Spent most their time locked up in jail.

Welcome to my hometown.
Where actual events can be erased,
With a replacing of the truth...
To conveniently be mentally innovated,
For the sake of giving it a different face.

Welcome to my hometown.
Where any visitor who comes,
Would think what took place...
Was straight from a portrait painted,
By Normon Rockwell.

And back then...
Anyone looking like Normon,
Would have been chased out of the neighborhood...
I lived in!
With no time to sit, sketch...
Or paint a portrait from a 'hand-me-down' myth.