Turn out the light

No scrutiny tonight.

Her kind voice washing over radio waves

Through pipes behind patchwork facades

Bring the murmur of comfort … baby

Far from judgement

Where you’re safe from that brand of cursive

And the tangle of lamenting souls

Each seeking to imprint their own

Moment of impotent glory.

Move over, it’s getting too crowded

We may be losing our sight

But heels sound their static curiosity

Whether we look or not.

The music of what is not prescribed

Can be a tonic …

Free to sling and fling, ferris of hurt

That word they used … did not describe you

And you must be strong if, you’re still standing

If it didn’t tear you apart.

Delusion survives the harshest words

But not when there’s no one left to pick you up.

You learn to survive even,

As everything turns and diminishes

Lean on the mercury memory

Of that fast girl who

Let nothing tear her assunder

She’s been wounded more times than she knows

Still she stands

Though without knowing

What it takes for a night moth

To inhabit the palaces of butterflies

How day burns her failing eyes

As they come together in posies

She walks separately and cut out

By her scarlet difference

Still upright, despite your hardest attempt

to quash and push, everything you had hurled

And the wasteland around her ankles

Is a new instrument

She will master, as she did before

Because she may seem to break repeatedly

But until it’s over, it isn’t over.

Darkness may have been what she knew

Before she learned

She could, subsist in light

And stake her own

Claim

To be treated with dignity

Turn out the light

No scrutiny tonight.

30 Replies to “Dignity”

  1. I really liked that! Groovy! I’m inspired to use my poetry as well. Not sure why I have been lamenting to use it. Thanks for that! Keep inspiring!

  2. To still stand, head high, despite the storms – YES!

    “To endure the unendurable, that is true endurance.” – Japanese Proverb

  3. Light can nourish us, some live only air, high in the mountain realm. Shall we reflect on what was, what is, or what shall be … and whatever we choose, will it be our truth…?

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