Poetry

For the longest time I wrote only poetry. It was just the last five or six years that I've seriously turned my hand to prose. My poetry, like my short prose, always came out of a dark place inside me. If I was happy, I wasn't writing. This poem was previously published in an anthology titled, American Poets: An Anthology. There was a volume number, but I don't remember what it was.


On Becoming Invisible
by Jacqueline Roth

Invisible
The smiling faces
Gazing back
Eyes look through
Glazed and unseeing
Because no one is here

A silent scream
Begging to be recognized
Becomes a murmur
A part of the drone
A whisper unheard
Unimportant, unheeded, unneeded

Laughter surrounds
Oblivious to the torment
Concealed so well
Because no one is seen
No one is noticed
Grey space filled but vacant

A shadow
A movement
From the corner of the eye
Gone in an instant
Unregistered by synapses
Forgotten before known

Invisible
Filler for the background
A shape without form
A blur of grey
Indistinguishable from the crowd
The tree lost in the forest

Breathing stops
Heartbeat stills
Humanity slips away
Fading away in the silence
Lesson taught, lesson learned
On Becoming Invisible