Declaration of Independence

Don't fence me in, you fools!

Declaration of Independence

“You suffer from yourself”
they told me,
those discontented taskmasters.

They claimed
I was my own worst enemy,
about to self-destruct
and at first
I believed them
with a child’s trust,
never imagining
what liars they could be.

After all, 
what could they know
about divine giftedness,
so bound they were
by narrow straits,
hemmed in
by toxic theologies
and green-eyed envy.

Blind guides
who could not see
the vistas God opened
before me
and the hope
of the spirits
who tended me
and bathed my wounds
in Christ’s blood.

They know nothing,
my detractors.
They could not fathom
what it would be like
to soar through the air,
riding on the clouds
yet never burned
by the sun.

They eschew creativity,
and claim
it leads to my doom,
those feckless fools
burdened by their barren minds,
never ever daring
to color outside the lines
of their sterile reality.

Again and again
they sought to hobble me,
but the chains
would fall from my bones
and I’d kick them aside.

YOUR GOD IS NOT MINE,
I’d declare.
Mine never cripples
those He loves.

My God rejoices
in eccentricity,
and opens
before my child’s eyes
realms of endless possibility.
With raucous hilarity,
he mocks those constrained
by rigid rubrics.

If they could,
they would lick reality
into a straitjacket
and whisper,
“Hush, hush!
Cease your whimpering!”

No. NO!!!
My God
is the Lord of the joyous songs
of a multitude of choirs,
singing their alleluias
even during Lent.

So NO!
I do not suffer
from myself.

Think what you want,
while I go my way
unfettered and free
and write free verse
you can never parse.

Your cloister
is a prison;
mine is the vast universe
of art,
and dazzling unencumbered
mirth,
and the Creator of all
is my bosom buddy.


BG 07.30.26