I run free my pieces jangling
  run to the crashing sea
I run shouting unashamed
  my arms vainly embracing the moon
  the wind grazing my flesh
I run still wondering
  in my dreaming
  the sunned stones cutting into my feet
  running into the salt-spray stinging my eyes
I hear seabird cries they are crying
  as they are lost as I am lost
  naked and unashamed
  yet still not free of my adornments
My ragged coat of many colours
  my certificates of allusion
  my jock-strap fantasies
Hark, I hear maidens singing
  but they are not singing they are laughing
  they hold a jewelled oyster
They speak of pearls
  I speak of caves to hide in
  lie in, die in
  the potential to survive in
They speak of life not the death I carry
  in this jolly knapsack that dangles at my back
  you see I am not free but burdened like Christian
Like Raif Badawi, Malcolm X, Olatunji,
  I am like they would be
  if they ran naked and free
As those dear women
  whose breasts bangled
  as they ran in artificial pro-aryan races
  at the command of cruelty
  sordid inhumanity
  nazi masters whose hell
  they shared at the shoah
As young children running
  from the horror of napalms burning
  as anyone running in fear
As we are running
  from the honesty of our deceptions
  so naked, so ashamed
Then run, keep running to forget
  run round the corner
  through the tunnel of illusion
  through the valleys of confusion
  across the hills
  into the mountains
  running then on
  and into the sea

 

                        ©edenbraytoday24.10.2021