the sad ones

by wiggy jones, "the little hippie boy"

for me it’s the sad ones it’s the birds born without wings the birds with broken wings the birds who never learn to fly after a thousand lessons it’s tha cats who never catch birds the cats who never see a bird to catch the cats who look at birds through glass windows all their lives and are never let out it’s the dogs who never run free the monkey who can’t climb a tree the chimp born in the zoo who never finds his own banana it’s bob smith whose mother won’t let him have a dog so he runs away from home at age nine and gets run over by a truck three blocks away and spends sixty five years in a wheelchair it’s ted brown who goes out for little league at age eight and the first ball thrown to him hits him in the face breaking his nose and he has a broken nose forever and he leaves home at age eighteen and a lady in spartanburg sourh carolina catches him taking a piss in her backyard at four in the morning and he is convicted of indecent exposure and has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life it’s maria willis whose mother won’t let her have friends for no reason that the mother ever explains but who probably wouldn’t have any friends anyway because she is just that kind of person who doesn’t have friends and she spends her life in love with dolly parton and celine dion and fills scrapbooks with pictures of them that she cuts out of newspapers and magazines it’s nancy gray who is kidnapped by her stepfather at age seven and is convicted of murder when she accompanies him when he shoots and kills a pregnant woman in a liquor store holdup outside amarillo texas and who takes remedial courses in prison for twenty years but never really learns to read or write so she never realizes her dream of sending letters to newspapers explaining the injustice of her case it’s the millions of bobs and teds and marias and nancys in thousands of times and places and cultures all over the world forever it’s all the dinosaurs and pterodactyls and giant sloths wiped out by meteors it’s all the neanderthals who were never born because the humans took over europe all the gorillas who were never born because the humans took over africa all the tigers who were never born because the humans took over asia all the bears who were never born because the humans took over north america it’s all the cows who end up in cheeseburgers all the hens who end up as chicken mcnuggets all the pigs who end up in breakfast sandwiches it’s everybody who waits for a bus that never comes the drivers of the buses that get lost in the bermuda triangle it’s the spacemen who never fly the aliens who never land the people whose stories are never believed no matter how many they tell it’s the little girl who dies of cancer three days before christmas so her story does not make the news as it would have if she died on christmas eve it’s all the clouds that never burst all the suns that never set all the waves that never reach the shore all the sand that never feels a raindrop