A Survivor's Poem

I was born in August. I imagine it was hot as any ordinary
summer. Other
babies were born that day, born into their mommy's arms, with family awaiting
the miracle to join them. I was different. They never even knew that I existed.
Orphans make problems, and I was one come age three. My mommy was young--too
young to raise babies, despite the fact she had three. And so they came to carry
us away and apart, sure to see a better life than with mommy.

Home one, then home two, a lesson so true was I taught:
  -When you are beat, sure, feel free to bleed, but don't you dare let out a
peep.
  -Dirty and sick was the label I knew, as I was beaten for not knowing
how to
tie my own shoes.
  -Learn and learn good just what things that you may, but never forget
you're a
sick, dirty shame.
Home three:
  -Stare out in the night, and secretly dream, wondering just where the
blacktop
might lead.
  -Learn to love the feeling of fist, belt or cane, for feeling the
loneliness
when they don't know your name is much worse.

Adopted at last:
  -Adopted, we'll have us a wonderful time, or feel guilty not knowing
whether
mommy would mind.
  -We no longer sneak to get something to eat, but now were molested
instead of
being beat.
  -Three years later as it all came to a peak, we're off to return to
the system
we knew, my sister had told, they didn't know what to do.

Home Five:
  -Temporary they said, unlike the youth detention facility last night
I got my
own bed.
  -The pain of the unknown was the worst, much worse than the beatings,
molestation, or words.

Home Six:
  -This time it's a preacher and his less welcoming wife. We were told
we were
here as repayment for when God spared her son's life.
  -Forced into submission, bibles, sermons and verse. Although the
concepts were
so foreign, I'd pretend to believe, fearing the punishment for the boy
who did not believe.

Home Seven:
  -By now all I wanted was for it all to just end, too afraid that my
actions
might prevent me from seeing mommy again, in that heaven place.
  -Perhaps I was crazy, it would make sense of my rage, which did
somehow
convince my social worker to visit and say: you told me that you would
do one of
two things, either take your own life, or the lives of your name, which
happens
to be the third that was given within your short life.
  -We would if we could, lots of problems to place, such an old injured
child
nowadays.
Luckly for me I had just found my own, the house of my friend who had
gotten
both her parents to agree. I moved in, name four, birthday came,
looking forward
to taxes, to my manhood, registering for the draft, real prison, and,
and...little more than good luck, as I left what I'd known to call
family, my
house, and my name-which I had just learned to spell.

Military, marriage, child, then divorce. My world fell apart again,
well of
course of course. Years later I have me a perfect wife, my daughter and
some of
the things that I'd left far behind. I'm learning, and loving, and
living in
love. All the homes and the names have provided me much more than those
other
babes, who were born on that day same as me, who were taken to families
awaiting
to raise, mine was just different, a destiny of sorts, except lacking
for
nothing now that I choose my own course. If ever I question the which
or the
way, I have two beautiful faces, in these I may gaze, in the love
and the
knowledge that was forged throughout time, the fruits of my life,
although
earned are all mine.