My flesh on some days feels like a casket that my soul carries,
Sometimes I feel like a pall bearer, singing dirges as I stride, wondering,
Does anyone see me, or are they too busy carrying caskets of their own to notice mine?
Within the metaphors can they hear the fellowship of an eager soul, whispering scripture as its daily bread; anticipating the burial of its self just so that it may finally be allowed to live?
Some days I fear my pores may be the victim of a planned escape,
That one day in the presence of many, my soul will force itself out through my pores.
Maybe that is what it would take for this flesh to finally be seen as the coffin it is.
This coffin made lies became my finger prints; blinded by falsehood so myopia became my retinal scan.
I could not access any doors unless my soul hid so far down that truth detectors could not find it.
Many said they could look into my eyes and see my soul,
Not knowing that I was cunning enough to strategically place a portrait of my human self, wide eyed and smiling as my internal screen saver.
I heard many say they love me for who I am but since I didn’t even know who I was, who were they in love with? Maybe the smooth shadows that resembled me,
The ones that everyone loves to play with until they swiftly disappear in the presence of light?
This life sometimes is an act on a stage, so don’t be fooled when you see us dance and move to beats, moving our hands in rhythm as we dissect mere words just so as to magically revive them as similes.
Sometimes our soul sends you Morse code that our flesh cannot decipher so listen, keenly, so that you don’t be fooled because the beats ended eons ago.
Our bodies overheated and broke down from constant gyration, our hands withered in time as our beloved similes re-incarnated to be our own eulogy.
The truth is, all you see is what we show you,
But if many knew that they simply watch a room full of lost souls swinging to the echoes of the tunes and sounds that loneliness plays, they may just take one moment from their clapping and try and resuscitate us with prayer.
If only you knew that the music stopped, and the band left, but we stayed rooted because we had no home apart from the music, you would understand that these caskets our souls carry need to be placed in the ground instead of moving back and forth from being played on loop.
Know now that we have hid this truth, trapping the stench of our hollowness in the perfume of pretense all so that we can stay relevant.
Let this be the day you know that we too, know pain, we too, are carved by blades of hurt, like sculptures,
That we are looking for home but are trapped in the desires to gain mere houses that the world sees as paradise,
That instead of simply rocking stages, we would love to have love instead of the lust we worship through pages and that we may know how it tastes to be free, to be a slave to the freedom of eternity.
So now that the curtains are drawn and you have heard the music stop and you have seen our masks drop as well, have you seen that we are now one and the same?
Have you discovered that we are merely a reflection of each other almost like identical twins exchanging glances from the opposite side of a window pane?
The cap has now fallen and the director has yell cut. The editor has left his work and the make-up washed off.
The script has been lost for good.
What then shall we be to you now?
Kings or pawns and will these chess boards stay on?
You say you love us, what side do you love?
Will you still sing our songs and read our poems when we find out who we really are?
Or will you shut your doors and bolt your ears?
Whatever the case, what is done is done; I have found an audience of one.
One who heard my soul and plucked it from despair,
One who saw my casket and laid it down for me, cleaning the bruises unseen.
Now for Him my dance is eternal, my hands renewed and my similes awe at His parables.
He is the beat, He is the tune, and for Him, I save my eternal applauds.
