Leviticus 16:21
“And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:”
Thrown aside to be forged into something
Harder
Still than Steel.
And yes,
I am the Ubermensch,
The overcomer.
But I earned it through suffering austerities.
They threw me to the wolves
And I hid and I ran and I stuck to shadows
And I ate out of the gutter like a scavenging fox,
I lived in the temporary dead spaces
Where nobody goes
Late at night,
To crossroads and inbetween places
Sleeping at taboo times in taboo places.
Liminal autonomous zones where you sacrifice
Your soul with elaborate rituals
At precise times.
I lived on trash and **** smokes,
I scavenged and learned
How to repair broken things,
Never relying on new.
I learned the burdens
Of possessions,
And how effective it is to purge
You of anything that will slow
You down if you gotta run away
Or leave suddenly
And go with immediate
Necessity.
I kept to myself,
Completely
and I never
Begged.
Ten years ago I was gorgeous
And instead of selling my body and my soul
I just didn't eat every day of the week
I learned not to be entitled to simple comforts
And assume everything has to be
Done
The hard way.
And, hell,
I learned so much from overcoming obstacles,
I learned how you either act or you hesitate and die
A mantra that I either do it or don't,
But there's no option to don't
And I gotta
Do.
It
Before
Tomorrow.
There is no suffering I can't
Adjust to,
No traumatic way people treat me
That I can't cope with.
I faced an agoge
Of necessity
And came out alright.
Beaten up and jaded,
But wiser,
Stronger,
More resilient than I was before.
Not to mention all the intentional pain I caused
Before it became an obligation,
I have made of myself a sin offering
And I like Job
Can see the Law of God
In everything,
Never having to compromise my morals.
Success is relative and no one can take
The things I did,
And I did things,
I'm not boring.
I drove across Canada at 18.
Got caught up in gang **** at 21 and became
A *****,
I shared needles faster than I graduated from University,
With distinction.
I've been arrested,
Multiple times,
Resisting,
Yelling,
Naked,
High.
I bribed a cop in Laos.
Almost got abducted in Pakse.
Knocked out by cops yelling drunk *******.
I've almost died so many times it's just a
Foot note at this point.
Done more drugs than
Elvis.
And,
As a point of pride and defiance
In my Promethean epic,
I paid my dues and took the consequences
And it didn't wisen me up,
It just became another pain
I just need to adjust to.
Hence why I hate being told
I've changed,
No, I learned how to hold onto myself
When everything was falling down
Around me and survived,
I have never compromised myself for anyone.
It's important to remember
That it's not that I set the bar low,
I either didn't compete
Or I broke the ******* thing.
And, '
why?
Why toss my life away with a roll of dice?
Spite,
Resentment,
Pride,
Ego,
Truth,
And defying the odds
And doing the impossible,
Even if that's just getting from
Day to day.
It took me decades to be able
To write this ******
Poetry and that same
Thing that knocks me out of cowardice,
Acts on my need
To write poetry.
It's not catharsis for me,
It's context,
And hopefully a few well worded
Sentences.