Is this my time to turn away?
Bask in the warmth of now and turn my back on history?
I was angry, I was always enraged.
You, in all your guises, brought me relief.
But now, with you or thinking of any one of you and the way you still do not respect me
(and now people do respect me)
I feel enraged again.
It’s clear that you were part of it all,
simply an easier part to bear in the face of my life.
Those, like you, who seemed to love me
you’ve forgotten what love is.
I have learned it is tenderness, it is reverence
It is not the right to belittle.
With it comes the desire to praise, to encourage.
I do not need your derision, it is only a little better than that from which you encouraged me to escape.
I wrote these words in the early 1990s.I came across them in a pile of old papers and was vividly reminded of the pain of being rejected by several old friends as soon as my life changed in the late 1980s. Simply because of its effectiveness in doing that, it belongs in this collection of writing. I found several other pieces (I hesitate to call them poems) but they just made my toes curl! 
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