What Darkness Lies within Us

There is nothing at all the matter with your beautiful spirit, no flaws in the soft folds of your heart for

You and I are bright beings of light and fire and I no longer care what others quietly whisper in the dark

Or what they have so proudly decreed from every alter and cited from their ancient and dusty books.

What darkness lies within us is only that light which has been covered and kept from shining into the world

And I will not believe that the fresh, young heart of a child is born forth as anything but sacred and pure;

A clean and holy slate to be written upon with the words of love and life, a wild and free thing,

Beating with all the perfection of innocence, all the brilliant hope and fire of a living, breathing dream.

For we are of the lines of innumerable dreams and visions of hope, sent forth along the endless path of life,

First from the hearts and minds and later the bodies and limbs of countless mothers and fathers spanning ages of time

And light years of love; we are the children of passions burning hotter than a thousand red and fiery suns.

We are the collective yearning of generation upon generation of sighing, soothing, thrusting love

Made upon blankets of skins in the rock caves of mountains or the plush carpets of tents and temples,

Upon the roughhewn planks of wild and lonely places with the coals burning low but the fire burning bright

As the snow drifts high and the wind and wolves howl against the dark doors of deep, desolate night.

We are the children of these strong, fierce dreams, we are the offspring of those far wanderers,

The scalers of such great and terrible heights, who’s hands reached through the dark bars of time

To push us forth, here and now, onto the stage of this bright and beautiful earth, this lovely earth.

I will not do disservice to that gift which they gave, I will not sit silent in the dusty corners

And sing the same sad songs as those who came before, I will not repeat the same satisfied lies

The dead tell the dead to keep themselves quietly entombed in the mind, wrapped tight in the funeral garments

Of doctrines and dogmas, embalmed so bitterly in the black and backward creeds of fear and hate.

Instead I will rise, I will wake, I will sing the fresh song coursing through the veins of all the earth;

I will lick the last sweat drops from the cup of life and leave no stone unturned, no path unwalked.

I will touch hearts and lives with steady hands and eyes wide, I will destroy the crop of guilt and fear

They planted so deep, with fire and passion, with blood and the heart, with the sword of the indomitable spirit.

I have come knocking, I have come clashing and thrusting, pressing with all vigor at the doors of life;

And not only to sit mildly and suck the milk of mothers but crying out words and sounds for the world to hear.

I will not sit silent while you feel shame for your beautiful being, this hot, bright spirit born within you;

I will pound upon the doors of tombs, throw back the lids of coffins and laugh in the face of the silence.

Eric M. Petit