[ NaPo 2017 ] No Apologies

  
Forgive me for withholding
many details of my personal life  
through my poetry; I prefer  
not to stir up ghosts    
   
Rather than evict them  
reclaim old haunting grounds  
I chose to move out and live  
in the moment; the Present is    
where I battle my demons  
   
Wraiths of childhood bullies  
who occasionally materialize  
linger only long enough    
as a reminder that  
   
I already killed them  
   
not in the arena of my mind  
to no avail  
   
but by turning my back on them  
and walking away  
   
Time does not heal a damn thing  
   
We do, with great self restraint  
refraining from severing scar-tissue    
in misguided attempts to slit the throats   
of our unwanted apparitions