A View From Under The Table Poem by Daniel Richards

Looking up from under the legs
Hidden by the table top
What I see is a half world
A world with half a view and with half the pain
But I find this not be true, what a shame

A tiled floor tracing roads of grout
As the voices above the table shout
Yells and scream fist fights and in me broken dreams
Shells of ice creams a child delight but instead I was fed violence in childhood through out day and night

Battered and bruised mother in tears
Father storms out and with him taken are my fears,6 years old now
Although overly matured, for my age,
But its resultant fact from witnessing violence and rage, but below
The table my shadow befriends me and we sit alone

And just like the floor tiles and the grouted lines
I’m walking two parent lines that divide me somewhere deep in my mind,
So I read between there lies, and I find although I can still grow
I must walk with my shadow all alone
My shadow is my only friend and within it I find my inner zone

Parental linings, parental timings and subsiding
The foundations have flown with the gulls
Anger is bad energy so I must deplete the demons of my soul
Thank my parents for this turmoil, strolling up the hill of life with feet of oil
I slipped and slid but I am no more do I hide

For I have escaped them and beginning to feel whole
I’ve exorcised the demons of my soul, a hellish bother
Given by drunken father inept mother like graffiti on my life’s wall
But I’ve repainted and I’m becoming whole, and for the first time in my life
I can easily stroll toward my life’s goal