by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
I pass you on the street. I can't be missed.
My presence is as real as yours to see,
Until you tell me that I don't exist:
Not dead, and not unborn, but sans ID,
Denied a passport by officialdom—
Officialdom whose rules insist that I'm
Called immigrant, and hence that I am from
Un-British parts where I've spent zero time.
My twenty-six long years of legal non-
Existence in my country will retard
Not only me: a nation prospers on
The worth of all, like me, who can work hard...
Except that I'm undocumented, and
Don't qualify—nor do I understand.Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.