Is this my goal?

 

To be a flawless museum,

with memories

found in

dusty jars

peeling posters

cracked floors?

 

That would explain the

1 am online rants,

erased

after drunken doubt

melts

into sober regret;  

the

concentrated photograph

slipping perpetually

in the shallow grasp

of

‘friends’

in a pixelated feed.

 

It would be ignorant to

post a notice

on a sugar newsprint,

proclaiming authenticity is

dead

by the Internet.

 

I build walls

not of straw,

but,

of thick, silver, heavy steel,

and yet,

I not only cry, but

crush my fingers against them till

crimson

drips

and

pools

at my feet,

ghoulish screams

ripping the paint

of these damn cold walls!

 

But why?

 

For doesn't

time

and his brother

love

always slip

through realities cracked fortress;

like a boy trying to catch Niagara in his palms?

 

What I want,

no!

What I need

is to be

loved!

 

My shaking fingers

bony but fierce

have tried

to carve,

to crack,

to smash,

to erode,

a perfection,

out of these

sloping thoughts,

stuttered words,

while nursing a

bruised heart

but a truth has blossomed

from the depths of

my heart.

 

My dysfunctionalism

is

confusing,

ugly,

but for those who

trek through my

ribcage of ravenous demons,

lungs of shaking sirens,

they will stumble upon a

quivering heart;

it lays

shivering

from the

voracious angels

who held me in the shade

but ran from the sunlight.

They left congested

but,

I remained looted.

 

I perceived flawlessness to be

an abstract notion;

words with no bones, not even a breathe.

After listening to my own voice

and not the thousands of whispers

of television,

of books

of song,

of art,

I know what it really is;

a state of mind

from when I dare love

the one thing that everyone

seems to vehemently disagree with:

me.

 

Quite simply,

I learned that flawlessness proclaims

that imperfections

are nonexistent,

but what if I acknowledge

that my imperfections

are

strengths

that have been bruised

by

opinions of those

who

I choose to let their

voices

reign louder than mine?

 

I am swirling mass of

opinions and facts

molding pictures

into words

with intricate fingers

spreading my soul

into the air,

rejoining the minds of

those who dare listen.

 

I am me when I let the voices

burn from the light of my

wonder

at the beauty of

my intricately grand senses,

my majestically simple body,

my vividly complex imagination,

and the soul that conducts it

all

when surrounded by the landscape

of my home.

 

Doubt,

a warrior summoned by the unknown,

will sneak her way into

my memories,

questioning, investigating, corrupting,

when reason and love are absent

until I throw her into the arena with reason.

 

Courage,

a shaman summoned by knowledge,

bursts through the arena,

flaming sword slashing

doubt

and in moments,

burning her to a

silver ash.

 

From those ashes,

a phoenix rises.

 

A phoenix who is

not flawless

not perfect

but a boy with

the courage to love himself

again and again

in a world that says otherwise.