Innocence
Knows no boundaries
Knows no hatreds
Knows no wars
But it is not all coy smiles
Happiness wrapped
In a best friend’s warm arms
Even the innocents
Know hunger
Even the innocents learn fear
I would wrap these two up
Protect them from such lessons
But mine is the world
They should learn
To fear
The world men made
The world men maintain
A world not made
For innocence
Wings whisper through air
Black Kite shouts discordant scree
Fearful pigeons flap
The wide-eyed innocence
Beyond recollection
Beyond nuance
When the world could only register
In stark simplicities
Mommy/not mommy
Pain/tickle/ooooh!
Shiny!
When I was free
To express
Every goddamn emotion
I felt
In every moment
A torrent of tears
Screams of anguish
A coo for a stranger’s caress
Giggles for the silly thing
Shaken for my joy only
And awe
So much awe
Now nuance has become unsubtle
Which tinges awe
With the immensity
Of evil
So I long for an innocence
I cannot recall
Knowing it only in the eyes
Of those who have no words
To remind me of it
I envy the present
That lives behind their eyes
But the future?
I fear for them
I’m not sure what I fear
Something in the darkness
Where the light’s too dim
To illuminate
So I rely on the beacon
To guide my way
Toward a point of reckoning
Fear with every step
In equal measure hope
On which I lay my trust
The light within
Too dim
To illumine
My confines
A window
Lets in
The light
Of the world
Slight
Narrow
Itself confined
To a shaft
Enough to illumine
Patterns
Which become bricks
In one wall of my
Confinement
That there is a wall
Unnerves me
But a prison of bricks
Is preferable to one of darkness
So I welcome the light
Invite its wisdom
Its insight
Ask it
Is there more here than the bricks?
A soft, warm chuckle precedes its reply
There is
You will not like much of it
Many things in the light
Seem terrifying
That is the way of life
But so too is there beauty
And love
In the light
And while terror
Is found easily enough
In the darkness
Love and beauty need light
I nodded
Contemplated for a moment
Then turned to the light
I accept this challenge
And so began
The journey to discover
Me
He dreamed of another time
A time that never was
In a place that might have been
He dreamed of a bridge
From a land spare and dry
To a fabled city on a hill
He dreamed of a fog
That stood between
Where he was
And where he could be
In the dream
The fog never cleared
He never crossed the bridge
When he woke
He realized the fog
Was the nightmare of his childhood
The bridge was a path
From the child to the man
From who he was
To who he could be
He would never cross the bridge
So long as he held the fears
Of the child
He would never overcome the fears
Until he allowed himself
To feel the child’s pain
Hackles raised
With the advent
Of some unknown
And unknowable
Beyond the fringe
Of a haze
Most dense
A trail
Betwixt and between
Courage unstilled
Curiosity unquenchable
Footfalls not to be denied
I step forward
Into the haze
The unknowable
Becomes known
Only to those
Who enter it
An unknown road
Into unknown lands
For the spectrum of possibilities
I strike a balance
Between fear
And anticipation
Then lean heavily
On the latter
Lines and curves
Simply and exquisitely executed
Create a harmony in form
Unparalleled
While the prisms and lenses of my culture
Cut and polished from fear and ignorance
Distort the culture that created this beauty
Into twisted paroxysms of ugliness
Once was a time
The path seemed
Straight and narrow
Far as my eyes could see
Entered a doubt
A fear
Indecision
Possibility compounded
Upon improbability
Chaotic grid of no means forward
So stop
Reconsider
Unwind the improbable
Evaluate the possible
Quell the fear and doubt
Make a choice
Then another
Build upon choices
Until trust defines a path
Pix to Words 