shifted and still lifted

A night where beautiful life is real
The mathematic to acting still
The unfamiliar the warm embrace
The family ties and the stranger's face
The lighting thunder the power steed
The what it is and the what is believed
The strong connections desire to need
The waking now or the moment to dream
The laugh the murmur the moan and the scream
The voice of reason somewhere in between
The one and all the me and the we
The I and I the thou and the thee
A man a design a child of the streets
The daily chore the impossible feat
The drum the chorus phenomenal beat
Easy to touch and the harder to reach
The sweetest fruit in the top of the tree
The sun the moon the stars and the bree-eze

I'm coming to it, and it's coming to me
I'm getting ready

- - - My man, Mos

And I know that if yall aren't feelin me, I'm still gonna be ... free. It is powerful what investment and energy placed in positive and infectious souls can do for your own. Politicking with people who believe in you, the mess in you, the fight and the freedom. The complexities and the mysteries. What liberation in finding love, what liberation in the act of accepting it. I'm gonna repeat that so yall don't have to press rewind. What liberation in finding love, what liberation in the act of accepting it.

Coming from where I come from, it's real important for me to draw from my past for reference and inspiration. And while my past doesn't encompass me, it is only so because of my work to make it to the contrary. I know where I come from. I know my journey. There is power in accepting all of the gritty details of my upbringing, my blood, my deep-seeded pain. There is peace that comes from seeing a scarred heart surrounded by the illumination of a healed soul.

And all of this is me. I can talk to you about some peace and love mess, but its just that yall ... mess. And that is so damn beautiful. The way that sometimes nothing but my tears speak for me. And I want you all to know how BLESSED I am to have been broken into a million different pieces. Blessed to have been destroyed, beaten down, and cracked into nothing but jagged parts of what used to be whole.

Because yall, when I picked myself up, and patched my soul back together ... I became BIGGER than the whole I was before. I became a million parts of one, reconstructed. I became a myriad of colors and attitudes and beliefs and ideas. I became a multitude of lessons and teachings sewn together, each one more obscure than the next but valuable in its own right. I became a lover AND a fighter. A healer and the healed. I became gritty and fierce as shit yall. And you can't stop that. But I promise to love you the best I know how, I promise to keep it real (at least according to what is real to me). To open my heart far more than my mouth. To laugh as loud as possible and hug you as tight as my arms can bear.

So now you can get with this, or you can get with that ... and it's still all gonna be me yall. I can't promise to give you everything you need, but I'll be there to nod my head when you reach back inside of yourself to find what you had all along.

I'm just a chick with a whole lot of confidence in the power of breathing cleaner air after you've shed a few tears. A woman who believes in the swag of her hips, the light of her life, the rawness of my reality. I am ... whatever I say I am.