Balls to The World

In My heart,
(My secret heart)
And in my mind,
(My sliding scale mind)

I am still ten,
With James Bowden,

The first of my friends,
Whose mothers told them,
They could no longer be,
A friend to me,

Note the first.
Not the last.

James was angly,
All tall and gangly,
A sinewy hawk,
On a couple of stalks,

And a melancholy struck us back then,
Though we were barely ten,
And, I suppose, an inner rage,
And mutual distaste for our educational cage,

And a longing to be free,
I wonder how it could be,
That we'd know all this at ten,
Did we even speak the words then,
Or was it telepathic empathy,
Or a melancholic osmosis from him to me,

Let's go to the fence,
He says, Give up all pretence ,
And shout "Balls to the world" as loud as we can,
And I remember now from a boy to a man,

The chicken wire clutched in our hands,
Too chicken to climb over, and off of the lands,
That belonged to our prison called school,
But it felt totally bloody cool,

To let rip, at the top of our voices,
Lungs open, against the all the closed choices,
Vocal chords stretched out and taut,
Eyes bulging at the unshed tears we'd fought
Back before life or hope had unfurled,
Heads thrown back, held high now,

BALLS TO THE WORLD!!!