in that time after dreaming and before rising when you feel you’re neither a child nor an adult it’s in those moments of true solitude the mind begins to evolve transcending believing seeing what has been concealed by human dogma and hate
seems like a lot a folks are hell bent on self-flagellation
imagining that their sins are somehow a unique creation
unlike any ever seen by any of the divine
thus only punishable by self-annihilation
but i’ve been wondering where this idea began
is it an innate psychological condition that lasts an entire life span
or has it been preprogrammed into minds by society
like so many childhood fears of the bogeyman
i suppose regardless of the source
one must reimagine their life’s course
to avoid being shamed out of existence
choosing not to yield to some malignant social force
before you rise or even open your eyes recall a moment of pure joy breathe deep into that moment fill your body with its radiance and let that purity sustain you throughout the day
lord that child is always taking things apart can’t accept what is has to know how things work and wants to know the why of everything ain’t never gonna fit in oh my goodness did you see the wonderful thing that child just made
songs should start the day songs that fill the heart with joy don’t begin the day with moans and groans about life for i can assure you that things will without doubt get worse
ever wonder
why
happiness
eludes you
maybe there’s
too much
of
yesterday’s old garbage
strewn around your todays
bits of
anger and fear
decaying
in the corners
of your mind
my advice
would be
to
take out the trash
shadows of yesterday linger above the sunrise rays of light reflect off discarded silver streamers and paper party favors those souvenirs of a dying year and the birth of unkeepable promises a rather pontius pilate moment for most merrymakers cleansing their hands of previous episodes of existence now offering up for crucifixion a new covenant commitments covering a range of declared weaknesses from health to social justice a contract no doubt when viewed this time next year must have been written in invisible ink
wide-eyed optimist carrying bible from one high school class to the next reading the text in study hall even believing that freedom was obtainable along with unobstructed success if one only puts forth honest hard efforts but now i’m a self-defined survivor all grown up with a greater sense of my own history and its stages of delusion and foolish trust so now i’m drained of milk and honey and filled with the liquid steel of reality and truth what about you
distant words abhorring overheard intended but veiled in denial then an all’s well smile flutters before eyes repeated gestures of oppressors seen more times than one can count objective to grease success’ pole before anyone attempts to climb out of poverty’s pit a pit stared into by tormentors from its edge gilded with promises serrated sides from which despots offer encouraging words and relay how they arose from the pit but they used the stairs
been rooted in the broken promises of freedom for over two hundred years so it should be of no surprise that we have grown roughened in our views of the future and misshapen in our attitudes for hope and justice in this nation oh when we were young we could easily bend and not break when the winds of ignorance and hate forced us toward the ground then we would rebound and once again grasp at the sky but now days we refuse to bend nor do we have to we have an outside that has grown hardened and an inside having knotty memories of the pain of our lifetimes we have grown and survived like african mahogany