SHOUT OUT!

I stand before you naked and raw,
A vessel to be filled,
Longing for some unattainable answer,
That sends me deeper within myself,
My soul bleeding,
From a million little paper cuts,
Ravaged by time,
Beat down yet determined,
To find that strength,
To not give in,
For to do so would be to let ‘them’ win.

I stand before you raw,
My emotions flowing over,
An empty cup,
Desiring nothing more than to understand,
These feelings that sucker punch me,
More powerful than every punch Tyson ever threw,
On a precipice of something new,
And undefined,
So as I search,
I become,
One day a time,
Stronger than I was the day before...maybe.

I stand before you naked,
Once a man,
Or so I thought,
Though now I realize I am but a boy,
Stuck in a mans body,
Cleverly disguised as an adult,
All of you fooled,
But not me.

I stand before you,
Unmasked,
Yearning for something,
That I can’t quite put my finger on,
And even if I could,
Would I?

Here I stand.
As if on Everest,
Aching for one last breath,
Before reaching the summit,
Of my own realizations,
Flooding my consciousness,
With another paper cut,
As questions mount,
And no answers are to be found… as I approach my seventh pint…
Leaking,
My veins with no more to give.

Standing before you,
I shout out,
I beg for your forgiveness,
Acceptance of me,
Acknowledging my faults,
And seeing through them,
To get at the core of my identity,
That you might relate,
With this struggle internal,
That has grown ever louder,
With each day I wake up,
Pondering, wandering, squandering,
All that I was, All that I am, All that I will be,
The only recourse,
These words,
That flow from me as sure as,
The water of life from the Himalayan peaks,
My lifeblood,
With each new cut,
Splattered on this page,
So…

I SHOUT OUT!

SDM