Those pictures of me
Are disingenuous images

Blurred from the start
The fuzziness has grown over time

I’m told to see myself
Where can I find a true mirror?

Others say the sounds of me
Are clear and eye-opening

I listen for the sounds inside me
Can sounds ring distinct and genuine

Still much static blurs
The best parts of me

I seek to find silence
To settle into solitude

I engage in deeply
Listening to the uttering of my heart

My heart emits a song
Of the genuine me

I do this thing where
I think I have it
All
Figured
Out
For five minutes
these moments of fleeting in denial
that I have anything I need to work on,
that anything is even wrong with me at all
I’m fine,
I just needed a trim after all
I just needed to talk to that one person
I just needed to take a nap
I just needed a night out
I just
I just
I just
and then the ******* demons crawl right back into my head and I’m like,
there you are

I remember the days it came so easy
The lines falling into place
With rhymes as sweet as melody

All the pain translated into words
All these tears into lines
What easy days those were.

Many years later
My pain burns silently
Looking for an avenue
But I remember not the language of the pen - the song of the poets

Now, I know blood. Scar after scar to make the voices stop
Slice after slice to make the pain stop
But I feel it. Louder after every cut.
The scars tell of that noise.

Tell me where can I go
What can I do
For this pain to finally stop

we can live as if nothing exists to control us - nothing plans to stop us - nothing lives to defeat us - nothing strives to define us.

we can live - just like this.
without shape or name or linearity.
we can be what we are.
can we not be what we are?