I Locked Me Up But I Escaped Poem by Jan Tchamani

I Locked Me Up But I Escaped
(Dedicated to Mr. Derek Walcott, author of the poem “Love After Love”)

Today is a good day:
A beautiful sky,
An earth that says, close down
Now – the harvest is garnered.
Smokey blue meets straw yellow at
The long, waving horizon
As the train, with emerald seats
Moves on. My hand on the paper
Which feels like dust.

At the hotel I shall
Smile at the disinterested receptionist
Her hair is full of mice.
She doesn’t realise who’s in front of her
Sticky, brown, trying-to-shine, desk.

It was a mistake and on the train
I knew it in the second when
The teenage boy with the rucksack
Closed the pupils of his eyes
As I laughed
And the stiff lady in crimplene – crimplene?
Moved to the next-but-one carriage.

Yes, Mr. Walcott, I learnt to love myself,
The ‘stranger who has loved me all my life’
And whose opinion I’d rejected, tearful,
In place of the ‘guilty’ conviction
Of peers and partners,
But that doesn’t
Necessarily mean
I can still go parading in public places
On station platforms and in restaurants
The unacceptable profile of my
Bipolar, manic depressive,
Normal-for-me
Lovable-to-me, intolerable
Weirdness…