Three Blind Mice
By John Herlihy

Pain whose tendrils extended far beyond reason;
Shame that covered me with a blanket in any season.
The childhood years seemed like a road to infinity;
I wandered aimlessly as a child thru an ageless eternity.
Carrying with me a life that I thought would never end;
I wanted to grow up quick and as a full-fledged man to fend.
To throw away the excess baggage I seemed to carry with me;
Three blind mice that burrowed deep and refused to leave me.
Their names are familiar to anyone who suffers their claim;
Guilt, timidity and fear familiar to any child by no other name.

Guilt seemed like a panther crawling inside me on all fours;
Every time I did something wrong, I hid behind closed doors.
Feelings of guilt just seem to creep into the corners of my mind,
Tying me up into little knots that made me feel tightly entwined.
The web of misery was sometimes too much for me to bear;
I would sometimes sit down, look into the mirror and simply stare.
No one could be as bad as me as I looked at myself staring at me.
If anyone ventured to look my way, my guilt exposed for all to see;
I still lacked the wherewithal just to be who I was meant to be.

Timidity flitted and flew through my heart like a skittish butterfly;
Its wings brushed against my heart to the point I just wanted to cry.
Childhood neighbors seemed to be aliens from another planet;
They played and laughed among themselves; but I was stone granite.
When called upon to say something, I simply froze into a block of ice;
Frigid with fear and misery, thinking my head was in their vise.
Moments like this have a way of wearing a child’s confidence down;
Life is not a circus where people can behave as if they were a clown.
My shyness became a shadow that followed me faithfully thru the years;
I couldn’t shed its poisonous venom that invaded my smiles and tears.

Fear flowed through my veins like the growth of a sinister vine,
Robbing me of certain native abilities I could claim to be only mine.
I could sing sacred songs solo in church with the voice of an angel,
When I stood out from the choir, terror threatened my notes to mangle.
Guilt and timidity drove me deep into the cave of my own heart,
Where I developed the ability to express myself in words set apart.
Fear couldn’t touch me because there was no one else around;
The words just flowed out of my imagination like a river unbound.
No one could threaten, intimidate, or take away what was only mine,
I had found an inner sun that touched me with its glorious shine.

In my childhood, I fought these emotions mightily;
I knew them to be the evil villains that they truly are,
Phantoms of the mind with whom I daily had to spar,
Tucking me into life’s corner feeling abandoned and lonely.
Never again will I have to meet these red devils face on;
Never again will I allow myself to be in this way put upon.
I have learned to face my fear and shed the illusion of my guilt;
I have turned timidity into detachment in my patchwork quilt.
Three blind mice now nibbling on cheese in someone else’s life,
Exploiting guilt, timidity and fear in insidious ways far too rife.