How Can I Be Up
How can I be up
when everything brings me down?
How can I see
when there is nothing around?
Who was I meant to be—
a lonesome drifter
with nowhere to go,
a strange lost mind,
expelled from the other world,
the missing jigsaw piece
from a picture
of a freak show?
How can I be up
when the world shoots me down?
How can I avoid
the slide of loneliness
if there is no one around?
How can I be up
when it seems
I am meant to be down?
How can I be up
when what I see is like
the things
that I want around.
James Garratt – Wednesday 24th February 1993
More poems at
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/
More about this blog, The Boy Behind the Glasses, here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/2020/01/08/the-boy-behind-the-glasses-an-introduction/
More poems from 1993 here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/poems-and-writing-1993/
How Can I Be Up – Written Wednesday 24th February 1993 (Aged 17)
The Boy Behind The Glasses. Poetry and Writing 
I feel like “Samurai Song” by Robert Pinsky Is a nice response to this piece.
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I’ve not heard that. I will have to listen. This stuff is really early. This is thirty years ago, although I’m not as horrified by it as I thought I might be.
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It’s a poem, my teacher gave it to me my senior year of high school to keep with me for the rest of my life.
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