A Little Bit Of Sunshine

The crowd scatters in time for the show Bags held tight, hand over their nose His presence is announced by the smoke hanging around him like a robe Although he's encased in light,  he's never felt more alone than there Exposed under its glare  His darkest secrets laid bare, he never knew shame What he wanted was the privilege to share To be asked his name, his story How it felt to be hungry  How he never wasted a penny But he'd trade them all for a friend 

I found I had written, what was in fact A long-winded prayer, seven full years I'd curled, childlike at His feet And because I could not stand I could not leave I had, sort of this chance, to speak There's a strange freedom in captivity You are chained in this one regard, so you are released from all others I could hunch down and get on all fours, howl and release the filth under my skin  and not wonder whether I were beautiful then The style of your clothes, the curl of your hair, what you eat...it ceases to matter And I could say, all I wanted to (alone, in that place) I didn't dismiss it. If anything, my frustration was encouraged by faith I could never believe what I could not question And I think he rather likes it, being tested And this book, contains a lot of those questions

I have seen in my life a kind of person Lonely, unsatisfied, drifting in the shadows Cast low in the dirt Disfigured in the face Fractured bones drained of marrow Mishapen like a weed in the cracks Broken pieces howling as one She was a whisper of a thing, frayed at the hem  Clothed in brown  And at her brightest, a muted blue  If by some likelihood there was a Great Divine who had authored her life He had not cared to soften the lines  Or appease the pain that sat on her chest like a wayward child  Instead, he granted her this : Never mind how she tried But couldn't avoid the turmoil that bled down her walls So she spun it, with some skilled fashion  She made it beautiful  With a hint of irony, she couldn't see that the same could be said of her. 

"What are you getting at?" Fewer questions have vexed me so. Laying out your point with precision and still met with confusion.  "What are you getting at?" Why, I am not getting anywhere...I have already arrived. Long accustomed you were to the idea that a woman's thoughts were half-baked ramblings, in need of a man's judgment to fully take form. Sifters, I like to call them. The kind of person I could never connect with, and I realized this much too late. For it didn't matter how thoroughly I explained myself, how neatly I arranged my words...they couldn't understand. Failed to. Refused.  "What are you saying?" when I've just said the very thing! When I've used no metaphors and underlined it in red pen.  And I got it then, they'd heard me just fine. What are you saying? was not in fact a question of what I was saying. But the meaning they thought hidden behind my words. They sift in between the lines, unsatisfied with what the...

When I started upon this path,  I was not so much called  Than I was viciously retrieved with an unyielding arm Rudely escorted off the premises of what used to be my life.  I was confronted by a most fearsome devil one August afternoon  Change.  And so I began to unravel all I'd known  Tossed the possessions I'd picked up in my travels  In a little bag  And started for North.  I'd always been aware in myself an unrelenting oddity I am all jagged edges and misshapen sinew Not far removed from insanity itself A perverseness that grew, feeding on itself like a well And the startling fear that it had scarcely  begun Here, in the clearing was more to come.  I was sycamore hunched over  Trying to keep myself small But I was always meant to be a tree... it is my nature to fall, haphazardly spilling my leaves Take up space, to defy, to break things,  to reach both high and deep To exceed what's expected of me To dance in the bree...