Behind the Mask (Poem)

  • Make me a mask so that no-one can see
    that the face that I’m wearing is not really me
    Get me a glaze to go over my eyes
    To look like I’m looking while melting inside

    Fetch me some specs that can read between line
    Fit me antennae that pick up the signs
    Lend me a lens that reads unwritten rules
    Bless me with patience to help suffer fools

    Find me a babel fish trained to translate
    The looks and the hints and the traps and the bait
    Arm me with ammo so I’m never caught
    In the crossfire of banter without a retort

    Fit me a filter to sift out distraction
    Teach me a trick to predict a reaction
    Create me a coat like the back of a duck

    So nothing will stick when they throw enough muck
    Install me a switch that will turn of my thinking
    Considering, probing, deciphering, linking
    At least fit a dimmer or slow-mo or pause
    To turn down the volume or close all the doors

    Give me that gift that they call ‘inhibition’
    So I know when to hush and reserve my position
    Programme an app that decodes all the crap
    Build me a bridge ‘cross the processing gap


    Alternatively…

    Make me a world where not every place
    Is buzzing with noise or invading my space
    Set up society so you can converse
    And I can obsess and neither is worse

    Where statements are clear and where reasoning’s sound
    Where some holes are square ‘cos not all pegs are round
    Where life on a spectrum is not to be feared
    Diversity’s normal and no-one is weird

    Ditch the requirement for all to conform
    Broaden our meaning of what is the norm
    Change the arrangements, compete rather less
    Co-operate more, re-envision ‘success’

    Where a living’s a right not a gift or a perk
    Where we’re working to live, we’re not living to work
    Where skills are acknowledged and talents are freed
    From each by ability, to each by need

    Design a fresh start where there’s room to relax
    To think, to imagine, to heal up the cracks
    Agree some new rules where we all have control
    Of our workplaces, life spaces, world as a whole

    A future where fear, hate and bullying stop
    A system where people not profit come top

    Surely this isn’t too much that I ask
    But until we achieve it – please make me that mask

    (By Janine Booth 2015 - Source: Autism Equality in the Workplace)

    I could work hard to be normal, but I prefer to hold myself a higher standard. Ego lex sum.

  • Wonderful, just wonderful.
    Thank you very much for sharing this.
    I feel touched - and not in a bad way.

    ~
    "Cause everybody’s got a part in the game
    And everybody’s got a cross they can claim
    And everybody’s got somebody to blame
    But we all must find our own way yeah, yeah"
    ~

    (Amos Lee)

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