Counting Cats on the Street

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I. Who Am I?

 

Out of Love,

I indulge in poesy.

For that Love,

I give my mother peace.

For Her Love,

She has suffered and endeavored beyond reason,

To give me Love,

In all its beauty.

 

She opened the blinds and lifted the curtains,

Releasing my inhibitions in a vigorous spree,

Giving me zeal for Life.

 

Now I look at the world witty eyed

And brilliance abundant.

I embrace the difficulties,

the pains and sufferings,

And endeavour to go beyond that,

To create my palace of divinity,

For Her and

For Me.


 

II. The Mask (I was)

 

As a child I was impressed by the phenomenon of religion.

In a space I could not see there existed a dichotomy,

A heaven above the clouds,

A hell under the sea,

And somewhere inbetween lived us, Humanity?

 

Countless wells that

Lead to the eternal fire underneath,

But only one flight of stairs

That leads the worthy up to see,

The palace created by His divinity?

 

I was taught to:

 

Love him unconditionally,

And Fear him indefinitely.

 

I was told that:

He was benevolent and witnessed everything,

And all the pain and sorrow

Was part of His greater scheme,

That what we are dealt with is beyond our control,

Because someone upstairs plays with our strings

Like mere characters in a tragic

Shakespearean scene.

And if I stick to the script

I might get drafted to play in the big leagues,

With Stars like Gandhi and Dr. King.

 

So in this truth I stuck with my character,

And I wore the white mask that reads:

Hello, I’m Christian.

But under this fake alias my inhibitions struck hunger,

Growing rabid from the constraints of my religion.

 

I tried,

I really did.

I swear I did,

 

-Out of Fear and Love-

 

I tried and tried,

To understand my mother’s grieving

As consequences of His bigger plan.

Trying hard to keep the flame from dying

As bruises erupted from her cheeks and hands

Whenever my father dealt her indignant fists,

Crumbling her down to sand.

 

But one day I saw the truth.

 

In her swollen eyes,

Drowning in the tears that couldn’t escape

I saw the truth.

God was Dead.

And all the pain and torture

Served only the satisfaction of a perverted disease

That leeched on the ignorance of people who believed in

 

Loving someone Unconditionally, and

Fearing them Indefinitely.

 

With eyes skinned open,

Pink and Tender, I was

Exposed and Helpless.

This mask I leaned on to protect my innocence,

Had failed me.

 

Rage, Anger, and Spite

In Contempt I found,

And together we shattered my Christian mask

Into a million pieces with blinding rage!

Screaming,

Yelling,

Crying,

HEHE!!

HA!!!

 

And I bled a Sea

That freed every vice from me,

But the loss of blood

Turned me cold and bitter,

Diluted in resistance,

 

To the temptations of a Demon

Splattered on the street,

Under the pale dead moon

It caught my eyes.

A cat,

 

Entrails smeared

Like someone stepped on shit

And skull cracked open,

Eyes hanging from their sockets,

Playing dead.

 

Then it spoke to me,

Flicking its forked tongue,

It whispered to me,

Sending chills through my spine,

warning me to run and hide!

 

Out of fear

I picked up another mask,

This one thick and heavy with hatred and rebellion

Made me tilt my head down,

And kept my eyes hidden under a shadow,

So no one could see the saddened, frightened kid inside.  

 

Out of fear

I grew monstrous in size,

I lurked with the ghouls and goblins of the city,

Where disease and filth festered and fermented.

I beat and I fucked,

 

Out of fear

I tore down the foundations of happiness

And drank from the chaos

Until I lost consciousness.

 

Out of fear

I would have drank myself to death,

But I was too scared to die.

 

Out of fear

I became Sisyphus, leaving myself just barely alive.

 

Set; Repeat...

 

Until one day I saw Fear in his purest form.

Brought on by the disease that was my Father,

In my Mother’s eyes lurked that vicious storm

That wretched her heart and left her forlorn. Only,

He was as dead as the cat was.

 

And I knew then she saw inside me

The image of a lost soul  

A poisoned, rotten seed.

Forlorn!

I too saw it in me,

 

But the mask had been on for too long.

 

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