Caul-De-Sac

I'm sitting on the edge of the Caul-De-Sac

Looking at one of my childhood homes

on a dark, 

and cold,

and crisp

October night

Back in 1995

My heart now roams ...

There are hand prints in the cement

on the driveway 

etched in the shadows

messy writing in the cement

bares a name of mine now fallow

but I still know who she is

and

I'm looking outside

and from within

and now 

my brooding soul hovers

 

In a shawl, black and knit

feet one inch above the ground

under street lights dim and lit...

The centered street light

bathes me in

a familiar orange dim

and a crows' perched on the rim

silently he stares me down

as my face bleeds a dripping frown

like black slate running down my cheeks

this is the greatest, deepest grief 

Grieving for all that was

I tried so hard to make it last

even though I barely grasped 

my vibrance, muffled

by all the noisy shuffles

then I got lost ...

and felt daft

then, well

of course

they crudely laughed

Oh what was

if it could've been

At the caul-de-sac again

When I was 10...

But, it simply could not have been..

because I never fit the scenes

Not my needs, my thoughts, nor my feelings,,

and not even, later on, my physical dealings...

I was treated as though I simply lacked

Something I, apparently, should have had

but there was never a 'real' - meaning honest - way to grab ..

'It'

Meaning, the 'It' that I should have had ..

But it was what I'd keep pathetically

trying to grab

I then hovered between

masking, wanting to escape

and doubting all being

But the doubt, I wanted to face

and in spite of things, I sparked a dream..

So then I began to dig

for the answers unsaid

through the rigged of the rig..

where only the fed are fed

Then I found some of the answers

I wrote them down in soulful red

then others like me cried out 'Aye' in resonance 

and informally, some real truth was said 

but the flipside is

today I'm half dead 

'cause I paid for what I said

I was too naive to know

what the hurt of discrimination 

denial of my very being

would do to my head...

I got hurt and tired to the point

that it ate into my bones

and too, I was burnt by the fire

of my very own desire

Throughout this journey

I became weary

and more than certainly

permanently leery 

Damn

I just got tired of being

with what doesn't hold my being

I needed to ignite

and I meant for no crime

but I was taken for wrong over right

when I'd ignite in response 

to unjust rhyme

Now, I'm standing in the ashes

and they're covering this caul-de-sac

They're raining down my back

Sitting slate grey flakes,

 

over a sheath of black

and I've been swollen

and I've been frozen 

weak and stagnant, in this poison

but with my ashes

 I must craft

a new way I 

have to craft

I cannot let them 

have the last laugh..

So, moon, pull me up 

like a magnet

like a shaft

Caul-de-sac

on this map 

Let the past 

Be ash ...