Beautiful Freedom

 

 

Trace through the lines and the crease of my face,

To follow the journey my life did embrace,

The leather worn flesh and the hue of old age,

A testament to freedom, not life in a cage.

*

Barefoot I walked in the shadow of slums,

The hunger, the cold, the disease ridden lungs.

The cries of the mothers, whose babes died in arms,

The fathers who drank and fought the wild storms.

*

My search for escape with the body God made,

My flesh was the currency I did barter and trade.

The sweat and the stench as their bodies perspired,

Lingered far longer than the time I was hired.

*

Money brought freedom from the chains of my past,

And a curtain that fell on the show I was cast.

It allowed me to travel until war came to call,

I lived through its death, its destruction, it’s all.

*

I loved and I lost more times than I should,

And I raised many children the best that I could.

I taught them to hunger for more than they were,

I taught them that they were their own saboteur.

*

Look back at my face and know where I’ve been,

Can you see the beauty and the freedom within?