Portrait of a child avatar posed to illustrate Peter, the topic of the poem, 'Wild Kingdom'

Peter: In the Wild’s of Africa

Coping with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Peter, Photography and Art

Memory lurks like a sniper:

We’re shot and relive the
forgotten.

Now we’re a little boy
crushed
in his Mother’s arms

she tells a bedtime story.

She says;

in the wilds of Africa

women have breasts
as thick as my thighs.

She says;

the bush is so dense a
boy can’t breathe.

She says;

and mamma birds
sometimes
crack their own eggs,

and the sky goes black,

and the big people eat
all the little ones.

Rob Goldstein 2017 All Rights Reserved

21 thoughts on “Peter: In the Wild’s of Africa”

  1. I am having a very hard time coping. I just recently saw the man who abused me honored. I wrote a post about it. They left out how he caused me, to date, a life time of mental health issues. How justice did not prevail. And the lengths those around him went to protect him and not me.
    This piece that you wrote gave me pain in my body. I felt it as I felt the betrayal of those who were supposed to protect and did the opposite

    Liked by 1 person

      3. I imagine so, Rob. I’ve tried to write about my past so many times. Tried to couch it in different settings, and I just can’t do it.
        Turn off the news. I have to… and I still see more than enough.

        I appreciate that you spread truth and insights without vilifying entire states or geographic regions, as so many others are doing.
        You have endured things that they can’t comprehend, yet you don’t do that.
        Someone countered with “They put him in office!”… Well by that logic then they elected #45. I feel like posting a notice on my blog that visitors might get southern cooties.
        Okay, I’m stepping down from my Julia Sugarbaker soapbox.
        Wishing you a thriving Thursday! Hugs.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Teagan,

        I’m a Southerner.

        The people I loved best and hated the most are from Charleston.

        I will never understand the parents who brought their kids to
        the elementary school bus stop to watch them beat up ‘that little
        Jew boy!’ nor will I understand the white parents who gave their
        children stones to throw at black kids on the first day of integration
        at my school.

        I left Charleston the year I turned 20; I never wanted to see it again.

        I blamed the people of Charleston and the bigots in my neighborhood and at my
        school for the torment of my childhood and I was partially right.

        A child who shows up at school every day in the same filthy rags without lunch
        or money for lunch is obviously being abused.

        The problem with openly racist cultures is they normalize abuse.

        But no one in the U.S. is without sin.

        Is there any torture more sadistic abusive the mentally disabled
        into the streets to die?

        The problem is not people who are from the South or who live in the South.

        The problem is who shows up to vote and the ideologues they send to Washington.

        I’m sorry you feel like you have cooties.

        That’s not fair.

        The times are frustrating and often enraging.

        People need to temper their passions, especially me.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. That was a truly horrid scene, Rob. I do understand. I was an ugly kid because my parents let my teeth rot out of my head, many times a large group of children circled around me picking at me, relentlessly… bizarre abuse from my mother every day. The older I got the worse things became.
        Nothing changes the nightmares of the past, or makes them go away.
        My only point was/is that bullies and abusers thrive in every state, in every city. They are not confined to the borders of one region. Yet from so many people blame is being focused on everyone in certain areas.

        Keep your passion — some one has to sound the clarion call to keep the world awake, to prevent the numbness that has already begun to settle.
        TGIF hugs.

        Liked by 1 person

      6. I agree with you Teagan. My Uncles in New York knew what was going on and did nothing.

        Children are almost universally treated like property and the degree to which our nation places them second to almost everything fosters their abuse. Part of the reason so much negative focus is on the South right now is Alabama. When the Governor says she believes Moore’s accusers AND she will still vote for Roy Moore you have to wonder how someone so morally bankrupt became the Governor of Alabama.

        Do you remember the Church shootings in Charleston? The people of Charleston did the nation proud and the nation united behind them.

        When President Obama sang Amazing Grace at the memorial service he sang it from America to the people of Charleston.

        These are dark days; I pray they will soon pass.

        Liked by 1 person

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