Why I Believe

The thing is, the lesson is, I survived.
Never mind the rust or the abandonment
or the sabotage or the self sabotage,
or the wandering in the wilderness,
bars and hitchhiking in the night,
the wrong turns and the right turns unrecognized,
or the helpers and healers, the jacklegs,
quacks, shamen and priests.
Never mind the things that came undone,
and the constant rearranging of fate
or God’s insistence in letting me stew
in my own juices. Never mind
the arrows or thorns or innocent bystanders
content to watch me bleed, those who
see me as entertainment or suspect.
Never mind the constant need for maintenance,
the broken parts, the ones I could fix
and the ones I could not,
the depression, the fear, the fight,
the checkered past, a perfect target
for any who care to shoot.
Never mind all of it. The parts that recovered
and the parts that never will.
The blood shed! So much of it.
So many tears. So much lostness,
darkness and fire. The wars. The surety
that you were never made for the world you live in,
the anger
I felt, uncomfortable with it every time it rises, and
the anger
aimed at me, a thing more comfortable to you,
more familiar,
but no less weaponized,
Never mind all of it.

I survived.
I found love. I gave love.
Some things I did, mattered.
At times, there is joy.

Don’t tell me there is no God.
I know better.
I survived.

About this poem.

Not the poem I expected to write when I stumbled on this picture of old pipes in an old abandoned factory in Massachusetts and decided to write on it. But the muse is often more honest than I am, sees things I don’t see. Says things I’d rather not.

Tom