Nine and thirty years
Stirring the primordial matter
Of being, function, and identity
Shielded from the shatter
By the fluidity of expression

Constrained by determination
Kissed by destiny,
Dizzied by the collisions
Within artificial boundaries
Of usurped hierarchies

Safe again within the tower
Of tender strength
Laboring for the least,
Toiling at length
To maintain the integrity

Of the led and the leader together:

The value of every sheep
Is the mark of the shepherd.

Blow you wild winds
Against the foundations
Unmoor the pride, the eyes, the sins
Of ancestral resignations
And the hubris of myopic
Overcompensations.

Tear down with all passion
The scaffolding of human reason
The artificial edifice fashioned
Of our goals, our desires, our treasons
Blow, rage, strip away
Obedience as contorted feasance

So the fundamental stones
Through time eternal may stand
Men of thought, men of action shown
Side by side and hand in hand
Skill is only knowledge applied
But even knowledge alone can
Spare the stranded, huddled inside
From the wrath of forming ignorance

After all, it is knowledge that cultivates obedience.

Five years
I gnashed my teeth,
Anger’s fist in my stomach,
The world, the future, my history
All rewritten in blood

Five years
I berated myself to obey.
Self-flagellations, recriminations,
Hard within a hard day,
Seeping the infection.

Five years
And I got sick
Death-rot in my gut
Burning sulfurous double-wicks
Trying to chastise myself to release.

One afternoon,
Memories sweet like sun tea
Cool on porch swings
Memories of your fidelity
When the worst is done

And You remain.

One afternoon,
Chubby baby legs in the sink
Repentance, dissolution
Washing her clean
Alongside my own soul

Tears flooding my rotted gut
Where reprimands could not reach,
The tender tide of love impossible
To dissuade or to impeach

Releases forgiveness, the caged dove, and
Restores the softness inside me.