People will keep talking
But I don't have to listen
Others will continue to expect
And define my existence

They will try to take away
What's left of my childlike innocence
And even then, the things I do
Are still none of their business

How can I feel okay?
When they become restless
From me not conforming to their way
They only see it as reckless

Their shallow mouths spew words
Bringing upon damage that is endless
With the naive intentions to help
Yet, why do I feel more helpless?

Childhood criticisms cling to me
Leaving me defenceless
Whenever the guards of my walls
Become tired and careless

I thought it'd be easier to live
If I was just passive and selfless
Until I was driven to the point
Where I couldn't tell what was precious

I have now accepted that it is okay
That I do not share the same ethics
The differences found in me
Should not make me so apologetic

You will find many different kinds of people throughout your life,
Try not to find yourself in any.
You are you.
They are they.

Yes, you are indeed right.
I’m weird and a bit strange
unconventional, odd, different.
But no,
I do not want to cut myself into pieces to suit
to your approval of what’s normal
and what’s needed.
I do not need to edit myself to fit in.
I do not need to apologize for what
and who I am.
I am strong enough to live my life in my own terms.
I dance to the beat of my own music.
It doesn’t matter if nobody understands me.
I am just being me.
I am real.
I am beautiful.
I am unique.
I am a proud misfit.

all my poems are unique general principles

~for Helene Mendelsohn~

“A general principle never comes to life in my mind except by exhibiting itself in various special forms and in
crowds of instances for each form":  
R.G. Collingwood

each a construct - an arch-i-texture,
each a crowd of a single instance
special forum, a dialogue differentiation,
a conjugate particle,
forming up, in marching order,
a singular troop, a base case singular,
a soldier especially demanding,
“Of Me, Write, Write”

for within my insight,
a one-off sighting,
one glinting wave reflecting,
its one millisecond exactitude of existence,
reforming unseemly, a new but not!

a seemingly similar shifted shape,
but no wave is a precision repetition,
perhaps a passing familiarity
of its precedents, antecedents,
at best

an instance borrowed and paid back
to the generosity of time
for a fully developed statement of a
general principle,
even a primary secondary textual emendation,
requires a unique naming definition

being born and dead dying while you are blinking,
does not understate absolute value,
a principle exists to give absolution,
so the moments resets,
perpetually,
but its own resolution is n’err forgotten

do you see the crowd of inferences
herein contained?

the principal unique,
poem plucked from passing sun ray,
a tickling hair of a brazen breeze,
one wave, one wave reconstituting a
millennium of preceding lives,
deriving its abbreviated genealogy
of droplets of prior principles
forever reinterpreted

so I gave you back
words you knew
but in a new combination
establishing this poem,
its constituents,
as a unique general principle

there is a prior poem, new, unique
in everything