WHO AM I - II

And then the question continues to demand, "Who am I?"  It continues to ring demanding a response, "Who am I?" 

Am I the darkened words of a few choice strays?

Am I the hurt inflicted by a few wrong hides?

The hurt of another? The euphoria of the blind hopeful?

All these do not know me. They would all like to leave their marks- either as engravings - their pounds of flesh or their, themselves lost offerings of putrid gratitudes.

They would either like to say that they were able to afflict a mark on the granite posture of the one created to stand like the Himalayas, God made or were able to bow her head in morbid shame throwing her Himalayan peak down in torrents of molten water, if I would allow them. No way!

I have seen one who should stand, kneel in peaks of petrifying anger, seeking vengeance and demanding I crumble. I have seen the indifferent. I have seen hate. All directed at the lost. I laugh.

Would I be defined by these - a casual high, a deadly trough, eyes that have not seen me but deign to assume, nay to define.

Would I allow another lost define?

Would I allow the hurt?

Would I allow the stark raving mad?

Would I allow the deceived?

Would I allow anyone? Seeing none created me save the Almighty?

I might have hurt. I might have stabbed. I might have driven the sharp ragged edges of a steak knife down the spine of a disappointed but none so intensely and with as much concentration as through myself. 

I might have the demands of a revenge on my head. The callous call of a bemused, a wrong or a wronged. I might have a bounty upon my head.

But it's gonna be a friggin' cold day in hell before I let anyone who thinks I owe tell me who I am, the limits or the extent of the heights I have been destined to soar, the pinnacles I have been destined to scale and the zeniths I have been destined to spring off.  A friggin' cold day before I let anyone I think owes me, define the graceful planes of triumph I have been destined to glide or the depths of treasures I have been ordained to excavate that can be found only in darkness.  

I will owe you one more thing, you will owe me one more- that you give way and let the King of glory come in!

So whether you be thirsty on the dry ravines of revenge or your eyes be bloodshot on the deadly mission of ripping. Whether you be serated with the jagged edges of a butcher knife or whether you have been afflicted with the blind blows I dispensed in the mad rage of a blind, wounded, bemused and crazy bull . Whether you are the heights of a gift or the depths of a mistake, I give you only one word - 

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah"

                              - The book of Psalms Chapter 24 verses 7 to 10. 

Why do I say this? Because neither you, nor I have what it takes to give anything more than a morbid past. Because neither you nor I have what it takes to redeem from the depths of a confused being the sparkling diamonds buried deep within. Because neither you nor I have what it takes to cast me on the throes of passion in self discovery and throw me a truthful and glorious definition. 

So... make way for the King.

WHO AM I?

There is a point of reflection. A point of looking back. Of wondering, "How did I get here?". Enquiring, "What next?"

I look over the terrain of my life up till this point. Basically, you may call it my past. Strictly speaking, every moment before this is my past, anyway.

I see a terrain akin to the war-fested metallic jungle that was the battlefield in the Tom Cruise Sci-fi movie, 'Edge of Tomorrow' - metallic robots called companions, even more metal in firepower and an actor repeatedly racing against time- and death, in cycle after cycle of failed missions. Whew, the story of my life! 

Tom had found his own companion, though. Not a metallic, cold, death threat but a living breathing human of like mind and purpose. She was his helper. I don't recall that they went on to anything romantic but I digress. Their purpose was single - get him alive long enough to fulfill his mission. If I remember that movie well enough, she was experienced in what she was to see him through.

Now, in this story of my life, I am Tom. I look at my life and I wonder at the metallic companions, victims of war strewn over the landscape of my past. Practically all, were metallic and if there had been any of flesh and blood or remotely even deigning to be, I had shown them the path to metal factory where they needed to be encapsulated in cold, hard, metallic grey. 

The story of all my 'helpers'. Male or female, my relationships rarely survived the span of the initial spurts of the first kick of a manual car to life, after months of inactivity. Why? I really couldn't handle flesh and blood. The story of romance was definitely, like a friend would say, "Dead on arrival". But then again, I digress. The thing is, too bad I couldn't even answer the question of "Why their presence?" in my life. 

And how could I? I don't even know why ME?

Through the slime-pits and mud-holes I had divvied into and scurried out of, through the dark tunnels that had become my familiar and singular route, through the catalogue of unsavouries and through misguided hopes in even more unsavoury mirages, one truth stood very often dim, even more often out, now flaming bright perhaps once or twice in twenty, thirty years against the dark, putrid visage of my past, the truth of absence, the absence of me, myself. Hence, the query, "Who am I?"

The 'goods' you are not proud to claim, as you now behold them like with the eyes of a newborn babe, fluttering open now, and then shut, only to open finally to the truth of your sensibilities aghast at the choices you have made. The 'bads' you can claim but fill you with shame as you comprehend the truth about the lies you have conjured up for your own benefit. Alas! They cannot be claimed either. 

The wrong 'goods' you could or might have claimed that were never yours but you'd claimed them anyway just because you could not identify what was yours... who you are! 

The tears you cannot cry, the pain you cannot feel, the lies you can neither swallow nor spew, the truth you cannot hear, the victories you cannot celebrate, the defeats you are not certain were, the life you cannot live... All simply because you didn't take the time to know who you were... and now you must.