Idiot

There is no legitimacy to be found in me.
My words vomited from the stomach of poverty.
Music from my hands created from abject illegitimacy.
“No academic training?
Good god, please stop expressing this trash.

Your voice rings boorish.
Apostraphising, plagiarizing, bastardising the mediums beyond recognition.
Incapable of discerning a sonnet from a haiku…
Worthless.”

Can the path tell the sojourner
Where to go?
If my shoes once belonged to my brother,
Am I now my brother,
My identity stolen by mere words of another?

To be handed low-status beginnings
Pot-holes waiting to be filled
Is disqualification by the masses.
An existence rubbed out
By conservatives in liberal clothing.

This calamity, this inadequacy
This stupidity claiming to hamstring the runner
Is indeed my bulwark
I am too irrelevant to realize these things matter
And I just continue to speak

Tragic

(multiple exposure photograph by me)

There was once a time in my life when I lacked confidence. I listened to others who looked to criticize and not critique and let it color my self-respect. We have all been trained in something. If that training leads to arrogance, then we have performed the most egregious act against that training.