On The Spectrum Poem by Daniel Bernard Kelleher

School time in the fifties
Was a fairly hard time for me
My grades at times were very low
For that I was considered slow
I could not grasp the English
The Irish was just the same
Teachers would ignore me
To them I was just a pain
Numbers were my strongest
Algebra was my best
To them it made no difference
To them I was just a pest
The other children knew all this
This made things much worse
They used to call me stupid
And no one to back me up
You see I was 'On the spectrum'
Those words unknown back then
School time left its mark on me
But thank God I pulled through