Mind Games, Part I:
Before I met you
I was bright-eyed and scarless
With a full heart
and untainted spirit.
I watched my world
crumble away
And be transformed
into a world you created.
You built four red walls around me
and hid the light from my eyes
To train me to forget
how to see in color.
You tell me the wall is black.
I see a red wall.
It didn’t happen overnight.
The walls became mirrors.
I stopped seeing myself and started seeing you,
a stranger in the mirror.
Something inside me still whispers
the wall is red.
I throw myself against the wall until
I am broken and bleeding.
One day I might just hit hard enough
To make it
Shatter. And. Fall.
Then they will all know the secret
Of the man, who makes the puppets dance.
You are nothing,
But noise and smoke.
Mind Games, Part II:
No longer shackled to your opinion of me
I let the iron manacles fall
and sink in a bed of silt
at the bottom of the river.
Without constraint I fly at the wall.
You thought I would fall
unconscious upon impact, like a bird,
who, trapped in a house, mistakes a closed window for open air.
But I am not a fragile bird.
It is not I, but the wall, that will break.
I cried tears of joy when I saw the first hairline fracture
and realized it was made of glass.
It is not black. It is not red.
It is only a reflection.
Black is the doubt you sowed in my mind
and watered and tended
When you should have been cultivating my confidence.
Red is my anger, the passion that yet survives,
the flame
that did not burn out.
I’m winding up for my last big swing.
The cracks have multiplied.
They are about to give way.
One last blow and it will
Shatter. And. Fall.
That’s the difference
between
believing and knowing –
- holding that shard of broken glass in my callused hand.
