I Am Who I Am

 

source

I am who I am.

Yes, I smoke
And drink and
Have tried every drug
Under the sun at least once,
Some of them,
More than once.

Yes, I have a man,
Or two,
Or half a dozen,
But who is really counting?

Yes, there are nights
When I would cry
Myself to sleep or drown
My sorrows in a bottle
Of Gin, Vodka, if
I've got an extra penny
In my pocket.

At least,
I know myself
And don't need
Some man in the sky
To tell me how to live
My life.

I'm not like you people
Programmed by society
To live your lives in boxes.
You all boxed into your cars,
Your houses, your computers,
In your storage spaces.

You all so busy living
In your boxed in worlds,
Living the "master plan" of
Get an education, get a job,
Get married, have kids,
Get a car, Get a house
And live happily ever after.

But are you really happy?
I know for sure that
Most of you are scared,
Scared of what exists
Beyond your little boxes,
Scared of the unknown,
So you hold on to what you know,
What makes you comfortable.

Well, here is a little secret,
We were not meant to be
Comfortable.

We, as a species,
Did not get to this point
By being comfortable,
We had to struggle
Physically, mentally and spiritually
To become what we are today.

And if you think
That we have arrived,
That there is nothing else
For us to achieve,
For us to work hard for,
To struggle for,
Then we might as well
Lay down and die
Because it is all down hill
From here.

Even the phoenix
Crashes down to earth
When it reaches the sun.

I believe there are two things
That should govern the life
Each and everyone of us lives.

One is that small part in you
That comes alive when
You do the thing you love,
When you be the person
You ought to be. And
Every time you bring it to life,
It gets bigger and stronger
Until you can't tell
The difference between you and it.
It is who you ought to be.

The other is that impossible dream,
That crazy dream that
People say is too out there,
But somehow it makes
Every molecule in your body
Hum with nervous excitement.

It doesn't matter if that dream
Is so far out there,
Surrounded by the moat
Of the unknown,
If you go after it,
You will become
The person you ought to be.

Now you can take
My words as the ranting
Of a person that
Don't know nothing,
Ain't never going to be anything,
But something in you
Knows it's the truth
And the truth can set you
Free.

I am who I am.
I might smoke and drink
And do my fair share of drugs.
I have a man or two,
More like half a dozen,
But I know who I am,
Who are you?


This is more of a performance piece, where the speaker is smoking and drinks from a hip flask. It came to me out of the blue and somehow it feels like a kick in the pants to push myself in all I do. Submitted to imaginary garden with real toads and dVerse.