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
lord what a day after years of wearing hand-me-down clothes from my mother’s rich employers i finally marched right into walmart bought myself new clothes never worn by anyone but me now i’m finally feeling free
ain’t gonna be famous nobody’s gonna remember my name past my funeral but that’s not gonna stop me from being me now i know some will say i’m an old fool for doing things for free when i could charge but i don’t particularly prescribe to all the new american tenets of behavior i still believe in being a good neighbor and friendly towards most folks you were right to pick up on the most folks part see some people are just plain evil i don’t blame the devil bad parents or hard times they’re just plain evil and even they can’t stop me from being me what about you can you be you