"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
Well, I don’t know how young it is
At times it seems most ancient
But its decision making’s hit-and-miss
Even when it’s trying to be patient
Some people say it’s fragile
I can’t say I disagree
Some folk have worn theirs ’round a while
With scars for all to see
But mine is little painted on
By life’s harshest of arts
Still it carries glad and sadder songs
My own sleeve-worn heart.
I walk around in circles
Ignorant as can be
Maybe say hi to someone
Who first says hi to me
The names I’ve come to know
I can count them on one hand
But somehow all know where and whence I go
I don’t understand.
Growth, it often dictates
Omnipotence
Or at least some form of competence
Gravitas by the crate
Little do I know, though, and it seems
Everybody knows the same.
There’s a day in some month that I’ve seen
Where everybody’s supposed to wear green
But nobody does
‘Cept lads and ladies in scrubs
And pinching won’t reawaken my dream.
Anything and everything;
I don’t know where to start
To lay down logically
What ends in the heart,
And begins in some shallow
Place inside my brain,
Whispering to me
Things I can’t begin to name.
Flights of fancy still alight
Right there on your shoulder;
Inside jokes make all things right —
Even endings seem much warmer.
No shadows fall upon us
Daylight does not banish;
So let us linger long into the night, and let our silence vanish.
I could find a dozen words,
And all would be quite true.
And I could find a dozen songs;
Half might apply to you.
I could train a dozen birds;
A few might find their mark —
But not one thing in those letters could
Illuminate my dark.
I can’t contend with the presumption
Your delusion’s only yours
If you stopped to think, you’d know the answer
But no, you’re just too bored
In your mind, there must be someone
And you write in a she
You don’t seem to think about the past
And what it means to me
I know you can’t see all my failures
Or look straight into my heart
But you only glance from your perspective
And it tears me apart.
My life has never been for growth;
My life has been to wither,
To cut back on what I’ve wanted most
With hyped-up garden scissors.
They tell me spring is supposed to come,
And I’m to fall back into form;
I suppose that must work well for some,
But I’m far from the norm.
My life has never been for growth;
I wilt and rot away.
Prune me back, and like a post,
It’s there that I will stay.
Many a person
Across the millennia
Has cursed my tumultuous claim
On their part of life
Still partly mine
To nurture, ignore, or to maim
But nobody asks me
“Do you believe”
Nobody asks me my lot
Nobody cares
If I even care for this
Did I request it, or not?
I don’t even know
I don’t remember
Lost on some cosmical shelf
I do what I must
But nobody cares much
If I don’t believe in myself.
Writer In Retrospect 