FIRST BORN (Penned in twenties)

My dreams are steeped in prophetic doom. I rise from them, doused in pensive lucidity, to beach the ghost shores of shame and nameless indignation. Having long ago learned to fear the inevitability of others' wrathful reciprocity, I must now change or perish. My armour has become too conspicuous, too heavy to bear. We are the death before dying of ourselves, forgetting all too easily and eagerly how to garner Courage instead from the tender hands of reverent Virtue and Heart-Tenderness. Have I the strength to be kind in a world so quick to turn cruel at even the slightest gesture of self-defense? For when everyone brandishes sword and shield the defiant act of self-preservation can transmogrify into a kind of death wish, the stoicism of Cowards and Fools. It seems no longer to be, that the only way to truly survive is to turn the other cheek. What have I become? Where is my faith in the saving graces of Discretion and Humility? To forget the self used to be the basic tenet of saving the self, but now seems the stuff of self-delusion and ignobility, creating within the human will, an even more toxic core than ever before. In the Herculean grip of Loss, Alienation and Loneliness, have I still the resolve of will to kill this sickly beast? Have I still the strength to stand apart, with purity of heart? Just how far have I slipped? Have I fallen so that this devil-mind will never again bid adieu to irreconcilable Rage and Disgust, however just they might be? Will I settle for the cathartic yet disastrous camaraderie of Hatred and Fear, or return, a prodigal orphan of the Hell I have bore, to the arms of my true blood Father, to be loved only as the sweet and simple child I am in His beloved, merciful eyes? I must die to all of this in order that I may live again. Oh, Heavenly Father, if You can bear any more kin, I wish to be born again.