Standing

There is no sin without guilt; no guilt without shame; no shame without fear; no fear without servility. No truth for the poet except that soaked in blood. Appearing as I am, being as I appear, I do not care how others regard me, nor do their opinions of me alter in any way my knowledge and perception of myself. I never avert my eyes. I stand alone. My risks are my own; my responsibilities, my own; my failures, my own; my triumphs, my own; all that I say and write, my own. If I offend, it does not mean that I am wrong, nor does it mean that those offended are right. That which offends is but temptation denied. That which angers, revelation feared. Man is a time only, when himself his flesh and spirit are, created and creator, suicidal resurrection; and in every time a wildness and a wiseness, worse than he is, and better—his comedies all vice, his tragedies all horror of vice, his truth a desperation of extremes.

I will not be held to blame, censured, shamed, for the lies lived by others. Between hypocrisy and truth, there is tolerance. Between mystery and identity, there is compassion. Where truth and magic collide, there is love. The hypocrisy is the lie that others tell you about yourself, urging you to falter.  Fearless, of course, I have no remorse; I cannot fall from a favour, a grace, I never sought nor claimed. My self-determination; thus my self-respect, incapable of indignity. Dishonour, only in cowardice; depravation, mere gratification. Assurance that I have stood alone, stood last, against intolerance, parochialism, persecution – my solitary exaltation. If this be I. If words from earthly durance loosed to earthly right of meaning cannot belie their wisdoming, the doubt-schooled care that bent back sense from skyish startle, faith’s delirium – shame not the aberrant, the divergent, the eccentric; fame her, fame him.