Featured art by Rimel Neffati. Click title image to visit her studio.

 

 

 

Sometimes I despair
Sometimes I feel neither here nor there
Sometimes there feels nothing left but dignity to spare
Even then, I’m on a wing and prayer

 

All I wish to do is spread belief
Reinstate that long since obsolete
Find a way to overcome the overbearing grief
Offer up reminder wildest dreams can be achieved
Knowledge need not come with death’s release
Bid the heart to stay and it shall honour thy decree
Beat with blindest faith to set us free
Weaving time and space into a quilt of gilded pedigree
Expectations great when I proceeded leading loss to gain
Faced with devastation
Gained relief from bleeding, superseding pain
Opened every artery to laminate my artistry
Revealing every single part of me
Not the kind inclined to lying
Still portrayed as insincere
Seen as impolite for every time I disappear
All the while, anxiety depriving me the words to make it clear
That being all alone is my worst fear
Need the light to thrive, survive the shadow I recline in
Seek and you shall find me in the shade

 

Sometimes I can barely even breathe
Sometimes I’m the voice of the bereaved
Sometimes there feels nothing left but ghost within the tree
Falling like the tortured autumn leaves

 

Sprawling out across self-doubt to smother its profession
Calling out to all devout in buffering subjection
Suffered voices all about me
Still I venture forth most stoutly
Too much work afoot to flounder
Boundaries to sound out as I found a more empowering direction
Still, I cannot seem to grant release
To thoughts endorsing my sustained decrease
Endangered by the fate awaiting getaway from destiny
No means to cease until it greets the death of me
Desparately seeking keep from deep-rooted suggestion
That ultimately, mine is curse not blessing
Drowning in the shallows of a mind deprived of air
Tattered wings and shattered dreams
Living on a silent spoken prayer

 

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will find the peace to fear no evil to the final shallow breath

 

Sometimes I despair
Sometimes I feel neither here nor there
Sometimes there feels nothing left but dignity to spare
Still I dignify these wings with prayer

 

 

 

Richard Charles Stevens

 

Keeper of The Crimson Quill

 

 

 

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