All I Be, All We See

Under the harsh interrogating daylight

I saw me for me

The everything and the nothing

Contradictions

Consistencies

Quandaries

And solutions

Pain that shadows the stunning

And a passion that scares me

Frustration and anger I pray won’t strangle me

And a hope that I will be

….anything and everything I could be

Would be

Will be

I’m haunted by ghosts that want to steal me

And I’m saved by art and words that receive me

I’m so God damned lost

Sometimes I think it’s better I’m not found

And I’m so willingly present

Sometimes I wish I could just slip away

I’m scarred in each of my layers

And I’m healing each day I look beyond the rearview mirror

I’m as unoriginal as sin

And I’m as original as the singular cell divided

At times I think heart first

And others I’m all sense

I can feel the black and blue

Each bruise pounded into me with thoughtlessness

And I can sometimes feel the imperfection ripen me

To colors that allow me a taste of my own version of perfection

I’m fleeting because I’ve owned my mortality

And I’m mythical because I let that fact breathe immortality into me

I’m laughter when life is too serious

And I’m tears when life is so achingly beautiful and real

I’m selfish and giving when my heart is involved

And I’ve learned I live nothing but hurt when I keep it to myself

I’m a flaw in the all encompassing life

And a knotted stitch that holds everything together in another 

I’m capable of self-destruction

And able to create the self-saving

I’m primal man in a forward thinking mindset

And new age hell on wheels in a Victorian woman’s modesty

I’m promiscuous with my curiosity

And tremendously guarded with my sex

I’m faith in the every

And I’m fear in the faith I put in all

I’m ugly because I can hate those who spread cruelty in a toxic spill

And I’m beautiful because I’ve learned to forgive

And stubborn because I’m marred by a photographic memory

That will never allow me to forget

I’m agony, ruin, and lone

I’m desire, ecstasy, and lust

I’m my black and white dreams

And my vivid nightmares

I’m born, reborn, and dead

And all the in between

Each life I’ve lived and those still waiting to be

I’m the chaos in the serenity of Sunday

And the peace in the raucousness of riots

I’m pulsating electricity that keeps my ego grounded

And I’m a livewire thrashing from one mood to the next

I’m lunacy when my head is full of truths  

And clarity when I’m spoon fed the insincere

I’m always too much

And never quite enough

I’m so many shades of me

And then there are the hues that materialize when touched by others

Staining me indelibly

I can see it all illuminated in that critical light

All that is me

And we

The been

The being

The to be

And the only option I see fit

Is to continue on down this path of acceptance

And simply allow that

I be

Me

E.A. O'Connell