who set me free by Roy Duffield

                          Laurie Avocado CC



​who set me free

    The other day I was run over
    by a driving instructor
                                   had my face and fingers stepped on
    by the ambulance drivers
                                   was robbed as I lay there
    by the police officer on the scene
(and a passing charity worker
—Help the Homeless--
            just a helpless
              opportunist
                                     can you believe?)

                               I was left stupefied by my teachers
                                 and educated by delinquents
                                         lied to by the experts
                                            on the news
                                         told the truth
   by some random guy
                    with nothing left to lose.

                               I was let
          fall through the net
                                         convicted of a crime I didn’t even
                                         fucking do
—needless to say
                       unreported in the news.

                                 I was told “Shut your fucking mouth!”
   in the confessional booth
                                              locked up
   by the ones I trusted the most--
        the bastards
        they threw away the key.

                                It was the prison warden
   in the end
                          who set me free.


​

Roy Duffield headlined last year's annual Beat Poetry Festival in Barcelona alongside some of Spain's most successful contemporary performance poets. He has a degree in creative writing from Bath Spa University; his work has recently appeared in the Trouvaille Review, Night Bus to Speakers' Corner, PoENtry Slam and Flashes of Brilliance and he sometimes publishes some of his micropoetry on Instagram as the @drinking_traveller.

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