Grey Matter

Grey Matter

You are…who they say you are.

A lesson stricken painfully into my heart

A lesson from which I would not part

Until I was eighteen and far from the brick walls

The Concrete Jungle of Sound and Light and underground Malls

The Sirens wailing through the Night

To court my nightmares and my plight

Of life and death scored into my head

Wondering with wonder and with dread

You are…who they say you are.

A child who has not one friend, not any

A child who has to run that race with many

A kid who grew too fast and knew too much

Recoiling from the hot hand of betrayed trust

Friends who smile in your face and sing lies behind your back

And you learn early how to avoid that attack

By sinking deeper and deeper until there is nothing but black

And your heart is hidden away in that rotten jaded old sack

That old sack of cynicism…

The one who reminds you day in and day out…

You are…who they say you are.

Not the child of a two parent home

Loved by him and her but city grown

A face of stone when I walk through the streets

A number in a system that pays not one regard toward me

That CHILD who is dark but well-spoken

That CHILD who can’t find her place and is misspoken

Lost and found and gone again and again

Flushed into the depression of that god damning spin

That spindle of life with no sure path…

Until that day when the towers fell…

Mom gathered and fled and dad stayed and remained

And I...broken in two…was gone again.

You are…who they say you are.

A child who grew to know more than the words

off the street cornered people who kept the company of birds

Walked into the South with no intention to stay

Weathered it out and vowed to someday get away

but life happened and I met true friends

who taught me that childhood was not the end

of trust and love and the sanctity of family

And that I am more than what I was shaped to be

That hardened child who is of dark color

Who misses her dead father and adores her mother

A chip on her should to guard her broken heart

As she mends the damage that kept her apart

from the good the light the laughter and smiles

and the good times that happen between the bad whiles

And though ups and downs and controversy will and do come calling

I alone am the one who chooses to keep myself from falling

I am all these things

You are who they say you are…

But you are the end result of what you’ve decided to become.