Raised In The Arena Poem by Kevin Patrick

Raised in the arena
Of torturers and teachers
Survival was hopscotch
With amputated extremities
Spread open the viscera
Of the last refuge of innocence
Nothing was wasted
On those manicured talons
Of sharpened politeness
Gouging relentlessly
Like the axels of psychopaths
Waiting to grind the meek and the kind
Spectators watched vacuously
Their camera eyes prowling
For the next main course attraction
In the suicide Olympics
Of the cauterized black sheep
Caught in the cracks of societies sidewalks
We tried climbing through
Those perilous edifices of cement
Growing fever blisters
Of the endless taunts and insults
Hoping that our freedom
Was on the other side of the wall
But the prize for our suffering
Was another laugh track holocaust
fresh sitcom inquisitions
becoming the comic relief on death row
Dying for your applause
In exposing my fatal flaws
My reward is paranoia
And a religion called pessimism

by just surviving
kills a mans ability
to fully live