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.