Do you know what it’s like
To have your freedom back at last,
To be able to choose new colours
Once pinned out of reach to the mast,
To find tho’ you’ve lost your employment,
You can still keep hold of your pride,
To discover the grass is greener
On the unexplored other-side,
To patch up your battered ego,
Once thought irretrievably torn,
To feel a strong urge to celebrate,
When others expect you to mourn,
To take a fresh look at careers,
When you thought it was all in the past,
To discover your destiny’s liquid,
And never in concrete cast,
To realise your aspirations,
Which no more are held on ice,
To alter your life’s ingredients,
And add a small pinch of spice,
To discover you’re no longer frightened
By things that are different or new,
To embrace all those sensible changes,
And take a much loftier view,
To keep everything in context,
And never let monsters appear,
To look to you dreams and take aim,
Keeping your sights crystal clear,
To be intimidated no longer
By applicants younger than you,
To know a wise captain will always
Choose an experienced crew,
To retain your sense of adventure,
Your instinctive love of fun,
To put down the now closed chapter,
And enjoy the one just begun,
To be welcomed back to life’s table,
And invited to sit down and dine,
To feast till you’re utterly bloated,
And swill it all down with sweet wine.

Moments
        elongate
to forever,
            without you.

He said
"It’s ok to be strange, but not too strange"
And over the years it has never left me

Because apparently, people can appreciate your “uniqueness”
But only in small doses
And if that is so, then why bother at all?
You can’t take a piece of someone and call it a whole

The good and the bad that resides in all of us
Is something we have to accept wholeheartedly
It's our humanity

There is a madness in all of us
A darkness
Just the same
As our will to live
As our happiness

Being loved in bits and pieces is torture
It's not just wanting to change for someone
Trying to be what they want you to be

It's hating yourself for not being right to begin with
It's feeling inadequate
It's worries and doubts pouring over you like a thick sludge

It's wishing you could hate that person discarding those unsightly pieces of you
And not being able to

Some people don't see the pain they cause
Because they've become numb to their own pain
And have gotten tired of waiting
Waiting their whole lives for someone to see them as a whole

All it takes is one step forward
Steady and sure
And one resonating acknowledgement:

"It's ok to be yourself"

So that our hearts may flourish

It is not always easy to express one's self
When his artistic creations are never placed in galleries
They are often forgotten of
Sitting there gathering dust on a storage shelf.
It seems as if ten more people are at the same task
As which you create with
Comparing their outcomes to your own
Your light of hope fails to light
Due to many missing you that must express
such visions
A dog starved to the bone.
Eyes meet the other exhibits
As your kiosk is primarily never sought for business
The confidence of challenge is there, however, it soon melts away
When all of the hard work which you have placed
in expressions for the world to see
Fade to darkness like the "dark side of the moon"
As night simply ends the days.
Questions remain about what you are truly "gifted"
at or "ahead" of other game pieces on the board game of life.
When so many are inventive such as you
One too many is a crowd.
You pull down a fake smile. A fake shrowd.
Now the net is neutral
Damaging my once vibrant flow
As my hands are now tied to how I can grow
The rules of the game are now many and harder to get around
Like a roadblock in your sight of your future
The air begins to become too thin and your mind weighs heavy
As the cut in your creative inventiveness
Bleeds too heavy and needs a "miraculous" suture.
Needing others on my team
Every time  I seek out such
I'm the "driver x" at the "speed races"
and the "forced gun" to bear uninspiring
and lonely expressive paces.
Is their justice to the laws limiting one's freedom of expression
just to protect those in the "top few?"
When the own half of the platform on which you try and "compete"
However, you are too small to be seen as "you."

The ones
That matter
Grow stale
And distant

As my mind
Begins
To drift

Useless
I sit
Disregard
What's left

Moving without sound
Seems pointless

How else
Would I know
I exist