The Importance of Knowing Who You Are: Stigmata

Who are you? 

Who are you really? 

A better question to ask yourself is, "Who am I?" 

After all, we are not automatically obliged to divulge to others who we truly are, but I think it is necessary for each of us to know who we truly are for ourselves. It is one of the most important lessons to learn in life, to discover the real you for the sake of no one else but you. You can be whoever you want in public, but you should know who the real you is - honestly, completely, and confidently - and to not be ashamed of it.

People falsely believe the self is stagnant, unchanging, one, and complete. But I think it is a sign of health to have a dynamic, flexible, fluid self, changing to each of life's silly turmoils. We should actively decide on and commit to core essentials of ethical and moral absolutes that we should attempt to abide by, to establish a foundation, unshakable and secure, but flexible, for no one else but the self. Having gelatinous keystones, for lack of a more poetic expression, provides a steady grounding and a sense of immunity from tragedy, from change, from other's cruelty.

To think, the only thing each of us has from the moment we are born to the moment we pass is ourselves, and if we can't learn to live with ourselves, life will be... unlivable. We must learn to accept the discoveries we make of ourselves, even the ones we didn't expect; to take what we've amassed and what we've lost, where we've been and where we're going, and to accept them as our own and use them to make the person we've always wanted to be. You have and always will have that power.  


Stigmata

Sip blood with sick knights
fighting for a crown;
a black jeweled ornament;
a crimson shroud.
I filed my teeth down with a spoon
and bathed my blood in a storm cloud;
washed out the needles,
and liquified the dreams;
found the dust I lost long ago.
It seems
as though
the weather in my heart is snow.
When you pull back the bow and release my vision:
Twain the jury,
kill the music,
and shoot down the pigeon.
It was a lake -
a dark lake -
I dipped my feet into
and let the tentacles drag down what I thought I knew.
Tore out each hair like a petal
and made a wish,
tied a noose out of the fibers
and with the stragglers I stitched
back together all the valentines,
made a sail to fly me back to a better time.
I walk the streets at night
screaming...
Singing songs the Devil taught me while I was sleeping.
As a child,
I made a crib out of ouija boards,
tied a string to my finger
and slit my wrists with a deck of cards.
Cleft tongue,
no eyes,
no speech,
just fucked up
and out of reach;
weighed down by gravity,
trapped on my knees
and short of breath,
I believe...
Bring on the machines -
the lights and sounds that protect me!
Candles in a dim room
casting shadows that I talk to.
Third person intuition
vague view
of fuzzy memories that appear true.
Building games with no winners.
Traversing a maze with no escape.
I raped my youth when I found out I was a sinner.
Surgeon of a masked future,
cutting up the past,
tape it back together
on a reel to be reviewed;
previewed;
I knew you -
recalled and bequeathed -
a toy chest for Death,
regressed into a chicken heart
snapping wishbones and cupping eyelashes
blowing flowers apart.
A skeleton clad boy;
a glass-wrapped McCoy;
a match in a windstorm of my own ploy.
It was a white day,
a black day,
a day of deceit.
It was the day I found the holes in my hands and feet!