Throughout the years,
you have made pictures of yourself
available for us to see

and through a number of them--
have shown unedited,  a clear and
horrendously honest view,  directly
into your deeply-struggling soul--  

and even if you may had just days  
or hours,  previously
conveyed a look of almost carefree
   happiness and beauty..  

Those chosen few  that
graciously gave the glimpse  of how
bad it can so often be for you,  
also.. unbeknownst to you,  

   gave light
of how tremendously valuable
and rare you really are.

And like a dyed-in-the-wool stalker,  
I saved screenshots of the ones  that
moved me to tears

years later..
and they still affect me that way

and in fairness, some the ones  also
to where you were truly glowing  
in all  of your natural beauty..

  on the ying' side
  of the bipolar swing.

You are rare and unique..
so very very one of a kind,
(and I have every right throughout the
years to say that to you here and now)

--that there is a  worth  within every single
part of it all that is wholly beyond measure--
you can feel it sometimes, little beauty
I know there is no way that you cannot.

One day  the ravens will no longer be
able to steal that wholly accurate,
beautiful self-view so easily from you,

..and you will be able to live that
wonderfully-accurate view out,  daily--
having now found it's way down in to
your very, central core..

.  .  .  

Sorry, young love.. I know how much  a
beautiful truth such as this, hurts.
You reveal so much of who you are
through the raw innerworkings  and
conveyances of your poetry and music.

You would not be that so very beautiful way,
if you did not believe that Love would
eventually find a way..

  yes, beauty..  even for you.

From an ornate podium
the orator spoke words--
..extraordinarily elaborate ones..
as if,
as if

But those who know..
we who have  laid low,
down in to the trenches
as grunts, both  outside
and inside  

    of the wire..

Those who have  quietly
done their legwork..
who have accepted their
difficult fate  as that   borne  of
and in to,  a training..  an equipping;
lay low,
lay low

.   .   .   .  

The throngs
at the foot of the podium--
mesmerized by their own  need
to be mesmerized,  never even
   noticed the children
who  in their innocence,  peered
out from under the crowd's legs

to better see the 'magnificent' podium..

The oldest of which, ran back to trenches
trying to describe what they saw.
Two of the quiet, unassuming-ones
made their way back to the podium,  
and in blocking out the orator's voice,
(which  to the  knowing,
was  as that of a clanging bell..)

Now observed up close, the inner-workings
of the elaborate podium
and sat in  wonder of its expenditures--
wrapped around such  slipshod,   weak
and hastily assembled framework..

And in having become interested in the
structure's groundedness to what one
would hope would be  a solid-built
foundation, placed onto solid, earthen ground
They instead gasped as they saw its
legs floating upon nothing..

"What the **** is holding this thing up..?"

War-trained and battle-hardened,
they remembered their superiors speaking
in hushed tones that even ******, with all
of his blowhard oratorical *******,   at least

had a semblance of the podium's fastenings..

Albeit, partially assembled by our own country's
stupidity within certain provisions brought forth
in the Treaty of Versailles,

   but this
   but this;

This oratorical misleading of the broken-ones
this empty illusion of a presentation,  borne
not  from a suffering  leading to true regeneration
but instead, a distractive short-cut into the Realms;
   This counterfeit substance..
as if borne in power,    as if..  as if.

    .. But the realms.. they know

It is only those down here on earth,  spirit
cloaked within the deceptive misgivings
of the flesh-- so aching to establish itself
apart  from the necessary legwork needed
to humbly become a part of Stream's flow:
(borne,  solely from the inner Wellspring--  deep
within the bowels of Love's True Ache)..


It is here.. on earth..  that you will find
the reward you seek..  oh wondrous orator,
oh magnificent 'smither' of fine words..

   Your podium, a whitewashed soapbox
   floating upon nothing..


--And therefore meaning   nothing
within the Substance-Based parameters  
    of the Realms.

I dream of a world
where you're not raging  at me
or ridiculing me to your friends
    for simply  
    my just being me..

Where you're not  throwing me
under the bus  in order
to make things go your way.

There is a lodgepole pine,  
a stick of wood that you fancy
as a staff in front of the crowd

  But like every single one of them--
  it is only a prop  

  to keep you from  falling over..

Wordsmith-formed, your poetic
  carvings
into your staff,   only weaken it

And no one in your selected crowd
  has the courage
  or the substance

to tell you that  the drawn out  nature
of each creative word
only hastens the prop's break.
.  .  .

The weight of the brass,   polished
on your ship, sinking down

will break the mast  at its base..
to that place..  all the way,  down--
the place where you have   c a r v e d  

   your most
               finely

selected word.