Sticks and stones
will break your bones,
but names they will define you,
limit you,
confine you,
until you can transcend them.
My bones will knit
stronger than before.
Wiser for the lessons,
as I learn to understand them.
I have also been known,
as lost and broken.
Fear me now,
I’m found an healed.
Let me tell you
about what it is,
to be an outcast,
to be reviled;
to know no sanctuary
from the stones.
Instead,
what if these could be
the bones that broke the world?
This life is more
than what I could pare down,
to fit into a message
that you could understand.
This will have to be
done with my bare hands.
I hope you’re here
to see it in the end.
I am finished
with fate and hope;
they are bitchy mistresses.
There is no succor now
for my disappointments.
Let me bathe in the glow
of burning bridges.
Knowing is half the battle,
then it’s time to go to war
with all the little things in life
that just get too hard to ignore.
I know what I’m doing this for.
I remember having dreams
of the end of the world
and it’s time to get ready, now.
Maybe I should have let
the names define me;
I’m sure it would have been easier.
HG – 2016
