Ghost [Warning: Explicit]

[shemthepenman]

As a child,
I relied on being funny to make friends.
My caterpillar eyebrows and middle-parted hair
Made fitting in a ghost in the creaky house of insecurities;
A moving concept, but still dead.

My whole life,
I have felt like a ghost;
Stuck between two worlds and never really existing in either of them.
I was seventeen the first time someone called me a nigger.
We were on the school bus.
That same year, outside of my best friend’s house,
A boy whispered in my ear that "white girls do it better."
Then a boy in McDonald’s whispered in my ear that
"Only niggers do that."
I was drinking a milk shake.

In none of these instances did I stand up for myself.
In none of these instances did I punch their smug faces.
Because I have been conditioned to find it funny.
I have been taught to laugh when my family calls me “Oreo.”
Laugh when my brother’s friends ask if I’m adopted.
Laugh when people at church stare,
Wondering if I am my cousin’s teenage mother
Simply because we are the same color.
My transparency is not funny.
Too dark to really shine
Too white to be a part of the community;
A sister.
“I’m not really black” and “my black half-siblings don’t
Really count as family” but yet
My white half-brother once told me I "came out the wrong color."

I am a ghost,
Floating over a physical happiness my sheer hands will never be able to grasp.
I am a ghost,
Trapped between two worlds but never the best of both.
And the next time I am called an Oreo,
I will most likely laugh it off.
But if you listen closely,
You will hear the moans of a colorless girl
Mourning the life she will never get the chance to live.

Hello,

so, on the down side, there are too many arbitrary words. Some slightly off word choices or phrases (e.g. 'in none of these instances...' - sounds TOO prosaic for the rest of the poem). I think it all could be trimed a bit, made more concise.

On the up side, I really liked it, like it. It isn't all 'woe is me' and the humour that is hinted at as a mask in reality is a beautiful reveal in your poetry. The laughing 'with' the ones that hurt you is not self defense, but rather self harm, and this is the subject of the poem; however, the object of the poem is offensive and positive; the authors humour may have been caste as a shield, but they have most certainly turned it into a sword. Unfortunately, there is an element, of fatalism in it. That, and to continue the mataphore, the sword will always be held behind the back. And it is for this reason I cried when I read it through to the end. But on the other hand, this is only testament to the strength of the poem, because I have never felt like that... in fact, the end of the poem for me would read 'ah well, fuck 'em'... you made me feel something I have never felt before. Is there any higher praise for a poem?