Shaking sobs

Understated pain

Courses through the prose

That has been created by my unyielding brain

 

Anxiety is unimpressed by efforts pointed at calling suffering’s end

Not a chance for light to peak its head in through the cracking desperation—

I’ve left to my feeble mind.

Trying to engage – this time – with something more than fear,

But I cannot hear or see or understand

From where I sit at the bottom of this ache

As I sink faster and faster into this quickly engulfing sand

Of uncertainty and unworthiness

 

Distant laughter catches my ear,

Surprised.

I have not heard anything like life from here—

Not in this dark pit of self-reveling,

In pity parties complete with pinatas

And sticks to beat the hollow hope

Out of the crudely fashioned papier-mâché

Mimicking idealist realities,

Gone are extravagant dreams

 

But delighted giggles

Mixed in melancholy cries,

Wiping my eyes,

Light pours in

Through the holes of hopelessness

I’ve created

With my splintered baseball bat.

 

Joy trying to see through these little openings,

See me?

Desperately searching

Tracking for something,

Anything,

To open this

 

All I could find with that limited light was a pen,

And the paper on the beat-up children’s toy

That I had ripped to shreds

 

And I began to write across the tattered beast of my limitations.

Every ink-made statement

Melted through the darkness of this hollow hope

To reveal light and freedom.

Black pen sunk through the glued pieces of parchment

Creating bold light

Under agonizing stories—

 

Writing

Scrawled out ideas

Of poetry, narrative, skits, comedy, and expression,

My mentor—words

My relief—it’s work

Great revelation brought about

By black pen

And written expression

 

No greater life has been spoken into me

Than that to which I was told I already had the key—

Generous freedom,

Presented

In words,

I learned:

I could write.

 

For Writing has been

Great testimony

Of all I’m becoming.

This is the journey:

More will be written tomorrow.

 

Mentored by pen

And paper

Covered in grace

And favor

To document the life

Of Word’s disciple