The Outsider's Song (Poetry)

I am the secret garden,
seeded dark and wild,
growing strange and tangled —
a jungle of a child.

I am alone inside myself,
no other knows the way
along the twisted maze of thought
I struggle down each day.

I am the one marked different,
the crazy oddball freak,
the one on medication
and counselled twice a week.

I am the living nightmare —
the dream that makes no sense,
the room that has no windows,
the cliff edge with no fence.

I am the empty promise —
the smile a madman gives,
the ghost that haunts the forest,
the house where no one lives.

I’m hope without a vision,
trust without a friend,
love too deeply buried
and longing without end.

I am the distant echo,
the shadow you all fear,
the whisper on the night wind,
the warning in your ear.

I am the void compassion
fills up with sympathy —
the tolerance of strangers
so glad they are not me.

I am the song sung lonely,
tuneless and off-key,
the words half-heard and hungry
for scraps of sanity.

I am the map that no one
can read or understand —
my ways are undiscovered,
my world’s a netherland.