Defiance

hard to explain this poem -- I guess you've either been there or you haven't. For me it is the heart cry that I would not give in, I would not conform to being just another robot that my abusers wanted me to be and deny the glory and the pain and the truth and the wonder of really living.

DEFIANCE

We will not confine ourselves to the dark brown moss of silence,
Wending our speechless way through the closed grid of conformity.
We will go and buy white birds in wicker cages.
And set them free to sing upon the wind,
And where they go, our souls will surely follow.

We have eaten the cardboard bread of our refusal,
Its gritty tastelessness has made us choke;
Now, in some hidden corner of the heart,
(Where our repeated dying makes the soil so deep)
We cherish a hidden harvest from surprising seeds,
The grain that must be crushed to make the living bread.

I can follow the steps of men, there is a concrete path,
But I must fleet as the deer fleets, slipping through shadows;
Or fly as the owl flies, sliding through my darkness,
In the swift interior places where words do not grow.
(Or wolf-like, lean with single passion in the hungry season,
Running as the heart runs, bitterly intense.)

We do not speak the soul’s dark agony
In the civilised places, clinking with correctness.
We have a laugh, a smile trained to the purpose,,
Dancing impossible steps on the rim of emotion
Each faux pas tingling with so vast a risk.
Blank-eyed we must deny it or admit the pain:
Like paper dolls swept up into the fire –
The conflagration of our trumpery.

It is time to throw out worthless souvenirs ....