By Stephen E. Mead
PROMPT — Who am I today?
I imagined perfect goodness an empty room
completely one color.
There anyone would be welcome.
How else to conquer selfishness
other than to entirely efface the self:
Guilt's hair shirt weighing down eyes,
& one must suffer, one must crawl:
Unworthy angel, turn the other cheek.
Is that what I've been dying for,
puppet of bones dangling in somebody else's vows?
Lord, part ways, cross fissures.
What is life meant to be full of
if not what can be loved?
Take the blank room & fill it,
a scrapbook.
I have new views
& they can enter everywhere there.
Stephen E. Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s, he has been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is artist/curator for the online LGBTQ site, The Chroma Museum.