Ipso Facto

Hear the hurt before you see the hope.

I learned the narrow length of every rope.

The clock is moving toward the middle mark.

The room around me falls more steeply dark.

I am a man of forty years of age.

They say it's time to turn the empty page.

My heart has beat a billion times before.

I feel the weight of what my body bore.

Have a medical and constant need,

For pills on which my daily functions feed.

I toiled for years to earn a hard degree.

Great honors came with magna cum laude.

I held a job while studying each night.

I kept my focus on their legal fight.

Jumped from job to job to find my place,

While tending their growing lines upon my face.

Ten years I bore to firms of statured size.

They saw the labor - but the human eyes?

They used my knotting fingers and my brain,

then left me in a state of pain.

Ten years I bore to firms of statured size.

They saw the labor - but the human eyes?

They used my knotting fingers and my brain,

then left me in a state of pain.

Ten years I bore to firms of statured size.

They saw the labor - but the human eyes?

They used my knotting fingers and my brain,

then left me in a state of pain.

Ten years of law without a place to go.

They see my rise, but always tell me no.

They told me I must tread with light and care.

They broke my ankle, then they tore my ear.

They pulled the flesh and nearly tore it loose.

No recourse came from their tight’ning noose.

I am only a man who loves another man.

I seek a place to work, rise and stand.

His steady hand meets mine to make the heavy light.

He stays with me while we dream through the night.

I see his love in how he stays in my hand.

Together we tread the cracked and hardened land.

The sun is now rising and hitting the floor.

I do not look at the dark as often anymore.

By the day, her damp nose nudges the palm of my hand.

A small life requires that I stand.

I now find my hope here in the love that we share.

It protects the dreams that I still choose to bear.

I study my lessons and write on the page.

I refuse to be under key in a desperate cage.

I fight harder for a future now striving for renewed goals.

The love that we share is what mends and upholds.

A dream once deferred is not lost to the past.

It lives in the future we’re building to last.

Though my body is tired, my spirit is sure.

I fight for this life and the love we secure.

Love restores and redeems us, absolutely.