Eden Hope

Mask

On my face was where I needed to be;
eating the very substance of which I am made of.
Before you, to adore you and assure you that I. am. sincere.
It was clear that I needed to when I noticed you, ever pure and true.
Yet my mask hid me from your furnace, that burns us, refines me to be WHO I AM.

The call for acceptance, 
Growing up as a teenager,  would reach my pager and wager my personality.
Commonality was conformity marketed by non-conformists… pressing their beliefs on a broken boy with no identity. 
So I picked up my mask, knowing my task wouldn’t last and started to blend. 

A child of a king, locking arms with SCREAMERS, BLESPHEMERS, LIARS, THIEVES, AND ADULTERERS.  But I’m cool… They love me, Which is why they abused me and used me, to buy their cigarettes, liquid regrets, and contraceptives.
Yet I thought I was supposed to be a man of pure integrity
with everything inside of me
I fell so hard I couldn’t see through my
cussin’ profanity, vanity bred insanity.
Purity: an anomaly. Sin was washin right over me.
Playin risk with the enemy.
Bitterness was a friend to me
Anger was all that I could see.. THROUGH this MASK.

On my face was where I needed to be. 
Eating the very substance of which I am MADE OF.
Your face defined me, yet I feared you.
~

Love
was a four letter word spelled backwards when I met her.
She was clever and fair, long flowing hair, smells like Marlboro, tastes like sin.
So I picked up my mask knowing my task wouldn’t last and started to blend. A child of a King; locking lips with a swift dromedary in heat that would make the painted whore of Babylon blush. Two feet in the grave;  I lingered on every word said, in my head, she would eventually love me dead, reducing me to a crust of bread. But It’s cool; she LOVES me which, is why she begged me to forfeit my purity, and when she tried, I denied,  so she lied throwing me to the side….
Real love was on my agenda,
but this girl was just a pretender.
I needed a REAL defender.
Instead I became a spender of my flesh.
Bankrupt of Joy, with my savings full of suicidal thoughts and plots that I bought from her market of LUST. 

 
On my face was where I needed to be.
Eating the very substance of which I am MADE OF.
Your face defined me yet, I feared You.
~ 

Abandoned
as a boy, daddy didn’t fit the foreground. So I hated every pore of the man whom my own flesh reflected.
Run child; from a severed roof to a place I could call my own. To be someone Unlike he.
Like a prodigal fool I had begun
to idolize
with idol eyes,
the idle lies
of mother mammon. The world was beautiful, but I was not. I was taboo so like glue I attached my mask, knowing my task wouldn’t last and I stated to blend.
Mammon’s embrace, I would chase, adorning my body with piercings, and things that gave me a false sense of confidence, sitting on the fence. I was dense… Nappy hair wasn’t ‘cute’,my intellect moot, feeling ugly to boot
so I fought to change the unchangeable with money.

Filling my flesh with more rocks is what I needed, so I saught diamond, and gold, and whatever I was told was FRESH or FLY for a black guy. But Mammon LOVED me, which is why her presence was rare, leaving my pockets bare, she changed my hair, and a heart that used to never care about appearance. Yet through this mask, all I could see was my own
Greed, making me bleed and stain my clothes with unsatisfaction of unaccepted and rejected flesh.
 
On my face was where I needed to be. 
Eating the very substance of which I am MADE OF.
Your face defined me, yet I feared you.
~ 

Then one day my daily jog through Hell on earth led me to you.
I could not avoid you, escape you, ignore you, define you, comprehend you, all I COULD do is FALL. On my face where I needed to be.

You told me that I was made In the image of You,
Beautifully and wonderfully true, that my fingerprints echo the hands of God
and my heart keeps the rhythm to the song of adoption.
Ab-ba…
Ab-ba…
Ab-ba…

YOU are my intimate father, so why should I bother a world of
dead-
     beat
            daddies in the form of luxuries?
You took off my masks, allowing me to SEE the very man of which I am Made From.
My face set like flint, You defined me. So I feared you! Oh how I FEAR you, desiring to be near you! Your LOVE is what I run to, so I say THANK you.

You are who I need
You are who I seek
You are who I love
Who I live for
Who is much more…. Than a mask.

EdenHope 2011